“When you come here, you’re stepping back 150 years into the past. You can’t do that very many places,”
A lot of Hart: Volunteers put pieces of history together
Joe Merten likes to say the Hart Historic District is “the best-kept secret in Oceana County... that isn’t a secret anymore.”
For 26 years, Merten and a dedicated corps of volunteers from the Hart Heritage Preservation Group have worked diligently to save some of the area’s historic buildings — and people’s belongings — for posterity.
Whatever we can save, whatever we can pick up, that’s what we want to do. People need to know where we came from. They need to know who they are, states Merten.