The village was first known as Norristown, honoring Seth and Albert Norris, who opened a gristmill here about 1853. In the mid-1850s, Godfrey Greilick and his sons, natives of Bohemia, built a small water-powered sawmill, which was replaced within a few years by the steam-powered Greilick Bros. mill. Until it was destroyed by fire about 1907, that mill was one of the most important on Grand Traverse Bay, cutting eight and one-half million feet of hardwood lumber in 1883. Other nineteenth-century industries included a brickyard, brewery, and tannery. When the Manistee and Northeastern Railroad entered town in 1892, the station was called Greilicks, and the village soon took that name as well. The population peaked at about two hundred, and the post office was discontinued in 1902.