Some places carry their history in their bones. The Holly Water Works has stood at the edge of Lake Michigan since 1882. The land beneath the Bar E Ranch in Newkirk, Oklahoma has held stories for far longer than any deed records. In October 2026, those threads of place and time meet in a single bottle, behind a single brick wall, in a building that watched Manistee become Manistee.

Manistee, 1882.

The Holly Water Works rises in brick along the harbor — a civic bet on a town that had just survived a fire that nearly took everything. The Holly Quadruplex Engine pumps Lake Michigan water into the streets above, and below ground, an underground tunnel and stone-lined vault cistern hold the town’s lifeline. The building is industrial. It is honest. It is built to last more than a hundred years, and it does.

Newkirk, 1893.

On September 16, the United States opens the Cherokee Outlet to homesteaders. Henry Engelking and his cousin Herman are among the thousands who arrive that day. They build what becomes the Bar E Ranch on land that had been stewarded by the Cherokee, the Osage, and the Otoe-Missouria peoples for generations before. Four generations later, the ranch is still in the Engelking family, and Henry’s great-grandson Jeff Casey has built a distillery on it.

Thousands of years of stories, packed into one bottle.

2021. The Founding.

Henry Engelking’s great-grandson Jeff Casey and his wife Shannon Guthrie walk the family ranch and decide it is time. Land Run Distillery is founded in Newkirk, Oklahoma — built on the same Bar E Ranch land that has stayed in the Engelking family for over a century. Their first signature: a Pecan Wood Finished Straight Bourbon, finished with native Oklahoma pecan wood and pecan shells from the ranch itself. It is unlike anything else on the market.

2025. National Recognition.

Land Run takes home the American Icon Spirits 2025 Daring Distillers Award for innovation in bourbon maturation. The pecan-finished expression is described by The Whiskey Wayfarer as “a nutty profile that’s both its secret weapon and its signature.” A small Oklahoma distillery has done something nobody else has done.

October 2026. The Meeting.

The historic Holly Water Works in Manistee, Michigan reopens — restored, repurposed, and renamed Water Works Distillery. Land Run’s spirits become the anchor of a tasting room and craft cocktail program. The original underground tunnel and vault cistern are reborn as a speakeasy in a building that pre-dates Prohibition itself. North Channel Brewing Co., the joint venture’s sister property, sits three blocks away on Washington Street — completing the craft-beverage cluster on Manistee’s historic waterfront.

It is a story that took 144 years to finish. It is also one that is just getting started.