CAMBRIDGE TOWNSHIP – State Representative Mike Simpson (D-Liberty Township) today announced that the National Park Service has added three Cambridge Township sites – St. Joseph Church and Shrine, Irish Hills Towers and the Walker taverns – to the National Register of Historic Places.
"This is great news," Simpson said. "These are sites that have a strong place in this community's history and are worthy of preservation."
Originally separate structures with no connections between them, the Irish Hills Towers (8433 W. US-12) are two side-by-side observation towers connected to one another, which stand on a hilltop site. The towers were built in 1924 by competing entrepreneurs who sought to outdo one another in attracting tourists.
St. Joseph Church and Shrine (8734 US-12) is located at the site of an early religious settlement established in the late 1790s by Father Gabriel Richard, minister to the Potawatomi tribe. The church is a combination of the original fieldstone chapel, erected by Irish settlers in the mid-1840s, and a 1929 addition.
Two Walker Taverns stand along US-12 in Cambridge Junction. One, known simply as Walker Tavern, dates from the 1830s and is a historic site operated by the Michigan Historical Museum. The other, Brick Walker Tavern (11705 US-12), was built in 1853-54. The building exemplifies inn/tavern buildings that catered to travelers of the Chicago Road during the mid-19th century and to automobile tourists beginning in the 1920s.