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It is fairly uncommon to find interior scenes of cottages. Almost all that we have are “real photo postcards” — black and white photos from the 1930s to 1950s, usually printed in small quantities.

Passengers left the driving to someone else on short and long tours between resort towns.

Slogans branding a town have been around for years. They were used to promote its advantages in advertisements, publicity brochures and on souvenirs.

Michigan’s beautiful landscape, with its rolling hills, inland lakes, and patchwork of farms, fields and forests, encouraged entrepreneurs to build sightseeing towers that offered tourists a chance to see expanded scenic views from a height reached by paying a small fee.

The Pickle Barrel house was novel, to be sure; and it drew gawkers, but far too many.

Michigan saw a boom in vacation travel after World War II, but it wasn’t only in the summer months that Michiganders enjoyed the state’s recreational offerings. The ’50s and ’60s saw a number of ski lodges built in Michigan, many in the Mid-Century Modern style.

Michigan was once a land of mighty timber. A few artisans were inspired by the natural materials found in logs, tree branches, stumps and roots to create rustic marvels. Although there were others — including the Jack Pine Lodge near Manistique, Birchwood Arbor in St. Ignace and many lodges and cabins — the best-known of these are the Legs Inn in Cross Village and the Shrine of the Pines, just outside of Baldwin.

From early amusement parks such as the Chutes Park in Chicago (1884) and Coney Island in New York (1885), came the craze that sprouted almost 2,000 small amusement parks around the country by 1920.

Long before 2006 when the “Pure Michigan” campaign launched, different slogans were used to promote Michigan as a travel and tourist destination.

From early Tom Thumb courses to later Putt-Putt Golf, miniature golf was a source of entertainment for decades.