- Built
- 1886
- Along road
- South French Bay Road
- Coordinates
- 45.5913° N, 85.6101° WGoogle Maps: Dan Boyle cabinDownload KML
- Eras
- Modern era
- Concepts
- heritagevernacular-architecturesettlement
- Within
- Beaver Island
- Media
- Beaver Island History Map, 1978 revision
Summary
The remains of an old Dan Boyle cabin were described in a Beaver Island Net account reached by turning from West Side Road onto South French Bay Road. The account dates the cabin to 1886 and says that erosion had left no more than three logs standing at the bottom of the bluff. The map point marks the named road’s access setting, not the eroded cabin remains.
The same account mentions a separate small hunting cabin near South French Bay Road involved in an early zoning dispute. This article models only the named Dan Boyle cabin; it does not merge the unnamed hunting cabin with it.
The 1978 History Map marks a “Dan Boyle Homestead” elsewhere in the south-side interior and says it later served as Nels LaFreniere’s lumber camp. Collar’s notes support a Dan Boyle filing near Lake Geneserath in 1858, but no deed, survey, or archaeological chain inspected here connects that homestead, the LaFreniere camp, and these 1886 cabin remains. The records remain separate rather than being joined from name similarity alone.
Open questions
- Can a historic map, deed, or archaeological record confirm the cabin site?
- Is the 1886 date based on a surviving marker, family account, or later interpretation?
- What was the relationship between Dan Boyle and the unnamed hunting cabin?
Sources
- The travel account describes turning from West Side Road onto South French Bay Road, finding a small hunting cabin associated with a zoning dispute, and walking down the bluff to remains of an old Dan Boyle cabin dated 1886; it says only about three logs remained. It supplies no deed, survey, exact coordinates, or independent construction record.
- The coordinate is the current South French Bay Road route point used as an approximate access-setting locator; it is not the cabin remains at the bottom of the bluff.osm · roads
- Described in this archive: Beaver Island History Map, 1978 revision.Labels a Dan Boyle homestead farther east and says it later became a Nels LaFreniere lumber camp. No deed or site chain was found linking that map annotation to the separately described 1886 cabin remains near South French Bay Road.
Added 2 August 2026 · revised 7 August 2026. Recent changes
Cite this article
Beaver Island Archive, “Dan Boyle cabin”, https://beaverislandarchive.org/structures/dan-boyle-cabin/, accessed [date], citing Beaver Island Net, “An Evening at French Bay,” retrieved 2026-08-02. (and 2 further sources listed on the page).
Last revised 2026-08-07. Fill in [date] with the date you read it — this page is static and cannot know that.