In September a cement truck parked at the Omena Fire Hall and crews started pushing part of the back wall out by seven feet. The Leelanau Township Fire Department truck kept there had "aged out of service" and only just fit in the bay. The newer truck replacing it would not fit at all. That was the report in the Leelanau Enterprise's Omena News column on September 23.
The column also gave the schedule. Block work was done the week before. Over the following weeks the crew would finish the inside, including a rebuilt storeroom. The columnist had been told everything would be done before Deck the Village, so the fire hall and community room could be decorated for Santa's arrival on Christmas Eve.
So a project meant for a fire engine is working to a holiday deadline. That makes sense once you know the building's history. In Omena, the fire department and Christmas Eve have shared one roof for more than sixty years, and their stories have been tied together even longer.
A hall the village paid for in 1961
Omena had no firefighting equipment before 1947 except buckets. The Omena Village Preservation Association's history describes bucket brigades passing water forward by hand, a system that worked better if you lived close to the bay. The village built up from there one step at a time.
| Year | What changed |
|---|---|
| After 1947 | Frank Kalchik uses one of his own trucks, fitted with a 500-gallon water tank and pump, to fight fires in the community |
| 1948 | The township buys a trailer with a portable pump, kept in a shed behind Anderson's Store |
| March 1961 | The Chicago Province of the Society of Jesus, owners of the Pere Marquette retreat center, deeds a corner of its property for a fire station |
| July 1961 | The Omena Fire Hall is finished at a cost of $2,595.75 |
| 1963 | Summer residents Fred Weiss and Robert Morse form a citizens committee for an Omena Volunteer Fire Department, raise $2,650 and propose buying a truck; the department's first truck is a 1947 Ford |
| Fall 2026 | The rear bay is lengthened seven feet so a newer township truck fits |
The first fire chief was John Putnam, who owned Putnam's gas station in the middle of the village. Keith Brown replaced him as chief and, two years later, took over the gas station too. For its first years the hall worked the way much of Omena did, run by neighbors from the same few blocks. The room the crews are rebuilding this fall dates from that period. The fire department's equipment grew larger over the decades, and the 1961 bay is only now being made bigger to keep up.
How Santa ended up on a fire truck
The Christmas Eve connection begins before the hall did. In August 1938, a group of Omena young people wanted a ride to an end-of-summer beach picnic at Ingalls Bay. They decided to borrow Suttons Bay's 1927 fire engine to get there. Jim Centner, one of the kids involved, told the story later, and the Preservation Association reprints his account. Red Leo, who was in charge of driving the engine, agreed to let Centner drive it on conditions:
"We were not to speed, were to take only one trip around Omena Point, and, to keep from alarming the farmers, who might think there was a fire, we were not to crank the siren until we were past the Peshawbestown church."
Centner says they did start the siren after the church, about two feet after it. The afternoon ended with sundaes at Pete Anderson's Omena Ice Cream Parlor. Then a county police car pulled up and two of the boys were arrested for stealing the fire engine. The Preservation Association's version says local politics before a November election were mixed up in it. The charges were dropped, and the history ends by connecting the episode to Christmas Eve, "when Santa comes riding up from Sutton's Bay into Omena on the back of a fire truck passing out presents and cookies to all."
The Enterprise's Omena News column has filled in the more recent history. Eric Hallett first brought Santa into Omena on the fire truck when he was a teenager. For a few years, a family with sled dogs lived in Omena and Santa came down Tatch Road by sled. Before the community room was built, everyone met in the firehouse itself, with no heat and a cement floor. In 2024, the visit started at 2:30 p.m. with cookies and caroling before Santa arrived at the community room, as the column's December 2024 preview put it.
That year more than 30 people came, about a dozen of them children. The Enterprise's follow-up called the tradition more than 75 years old and said Omena's Club 21 had sponsored it for many years. The same column described third-generation visitors, including children whose grandmother grew up in Omena and went to see Santa every year.
Why seven feet matters in December
Through most of the year the fire hall is simply where the truck is kept. In late November it becomes the village's holiday headquarters. In 2025, volunteers met on the Friday before Thanksgiving and decorated three buildings: the Omena Post Office, the fire hall and community room, and the Omena Historical Society Museum in the Putnam-Cloud Tower House. Afterward the Historical Society hosted refreshments for everyone, according to the Omena News column from November 26, 2025.
That explains why the renovation schedule was tied to Deck the Village rather than to the truck's arrival. The truck bay, the storeroom being rebuilt and the community room the volunteers decorate are all part of the same fire hall, so one building has to be ready for both. The newer truck itself, in the column's words, "is good news for the Omena community."
The hall wasn't the only construction in the village this fall. The same September column announced that pothole and drainage repairs on Omena Point Road would start October 5. The work would redo the road from the M-22 intersection at the beach to near the turn before Omena Heights Road, and the column warned it would take several weeks with traffic impacts. The Leelanau County Road Commission's bid package set October 23, 2026 as the completion date.
The rest of Omena's December
The fire hall is the busiest building in December, but a few other spots around the village keep regular hours through the season, and they can be planned around:
- Thursday coffee at the Historical Society. The Omena Historical Society holds a Community Coffee Hour every Thursday at 10 a.m., with coffee and conversation and no program. The museum's summer season ended September 5, but the coffee hour keeps going. Tours of the museum are available by appointment all year. Christmas Eve is a Thursday this year, and the Northport-Omena community calendar lists the coffee hour on December 24.
- Knot Just a Bar. Knot Just a Bar is open seven days a week year-round for breakfast, lunch and dinner. It closes on Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve and Christmas.
- V Gallery. V Gallery is in the former Tamarack Craftsman Gallery space, where gallery history goes back to 1976. Its posted hours are Saturday and Sunday from noon to 5 p.m., plus appointments.
- Holiday music up the road. The Village Voices of Northport, directed by Amanda Kruk, have their annual Holiday Concert on Sunday, November 29 at 2 p.m.
At the other end of the village from the fire hall is the Omena Presbyterian Church. It was built in 1858 as the Presbyterian Mission Church, six years after Reverend Peter Dougherty founded it as part of his mission school on Omena Heights. Between the two buildings is most of Omena's holiday history: the church where people once came by sleigh to a candle-lit tree, and the 1961 hall where Santa now arrives on a township fire truck.
For this year's Deck the Village date and the Christmas Eve start time, the weekly Omena News column in the Leelanau Enterprise and the Northport-Omena community calendar are where the village posts its schedule. In 2024, cookies and caroling started at 2:30 p.m.
If you own in Omena and want to know what your place would be worth this winter, Schaub Team Premier Realty is glad to talk it through and give you a free property valuation.
