Glen Arbor Township went through considerable physical and cultural history prior to 1920. Hundreds of old photographs, maps, and firsthand accounts illustrate this history. Land was cleared and farmed beginning with Indigenous people and immigrant settlement. Political boundaries changed frequently (1856-1871) before commercial lumbering drove population growth (1880s-1917) and clear-cut the land. Although resort development and fruit orchards began in the 1890s, they reached their height around 1920.