1908

These are pictures from a booklet that my family brought with them when they moved from Muskegon. It was put out in 1908 by the Muskegon Chamber of Commerce. I thought that it should be shared with those researching the area, so I will be posting pictures as I get them scanned along with the associated text. Enjoy!

Title page

A booklet on the advantages of spending the summer season or your vacation in and around Muskegon. Its many lakes, rivers and woods being unsurpassed for the enjoyment of bathing, boating, fishing and camping-in cottage or under canvas- details of which are fully contained herein, with maps showing lakes and rivers and transportation lines.

Muskegon is the ideal made real; it is the seemingly impossible come true. It is the vacation place of your dreams.

At Muskegon you go fishing in a street car; you live in a city and breath country air; the wind blows, but there is no dust; the sun is always shining, but it is never hot.

Muskegon is a busy, prosperous city of 25,000 people. It stretches for six miles along the shore of Muskegon Lake and is only four miles from the beach of Lake Michigan. The west and southwest winds, the prevailing hot winds of summer-time elsewhere, are cooled by their seventy-five mile passage over Lake Michigan and bring to Muskegon fresh, cool breezes every day. The street car system extends from Lake Mchigan through the city, and for six miles beyond, to the shores of MONA LAKE, THE BEAUTIFUL. Within a radius of a dozen miles, and all accessible by smooth, good roads, are over twenty smaller lakes, a dozen trout streams, and Muskegon River, the largest and most picturesque river in Michigan.

In Muskegon City there are a half dozen hotels, and a large number of private houses where summer guests are entertained. The accommodations are suited to any purse. There is no place in all Muskegon that the cool breezes do not reach, and shade trees line every street. In the heart of Muskegon is beautiful Hackley Park with its flowers and ornamental shrubs, its statues, monuments, shaded walks and velvet grass. Everywhere throughout the city are asphalt and brick paved streets, bordered by beautiful houses with well-kept lawns; and everywhere is the tree shade, and always the cool breezes.

The city street cars run every ten minutes to Lake Michigan Park, fare 5 cents. On the way they pass along the edge of the bluff that overlooks Muskegon Lake, running for a distance of four miles in constant view of the water. Near the end of the journey the car leaves Muskegon Lake and plunges into the deep shade of the primeval woods, breaking cover again as the sparkling blue waters of Lake Michigan flash into view.

Lake Michigan Park is a natural forest skirting a broad, sandy beach. The majesty of the grand old oaks, murmering together in the breeze, overshadows the dancing waves laughing in the sunlight and singing as they break upon the sand. As far as the eye can reach, the billows are rolling in and breaking in long lines of foam upon the beach. Out on the blue, the sails of ships and the smoke of steamers mark the path of commerce on Lake Michigan.

Lining the beach, and connected by the board walk, are a roller coaster, restaurants, dancing hall, ice cream parlors, candy and fruit stores, oriental bazarr, band stand, theatre, bath pavilion, bowling alleys, curio stores, and other amusment features. At night time, thousands of electric lights transform the Park into a fairyland.

Pictures from page 5-

Pictures from top and bottom of Page 6-

Text from Page 6 & 8-

BATHING

In the surf are a hundred bathers, many of them children, for the slope of the beach is so gradual that there is no danger of getting into water dangerously deep. Diving floats and platforms are seen farther out. Along the board walk, and on the white, clean sand are other hundreds of people who enjoy the cool breeze sweeping in as they watch the bathers.

FISHING

A quarter of a mile up the beach are the long piers of "The Channel," the entrance to Muskegon Harbor, where are located the light-house and life-saving station. along the piers is a summer colony of resorters, fishing for perch. the fish bite as fast as the hook can be baited and make delicious eating.

As the channel broadens into Muskegon Lake, five miles long and three miles wide, a dozen boats are seen bobbing in the water, filled with fishermen catching white bass on the bar. Muskegon Lake is and always will be, the greatest natural fishing ground in Michigan. The Muskegon River which empties into Muskegon Lake five miles above the channel to Lake Michigan, is the spawning place for the millions of bass and pickerel evry year. Great schools of these game fish come through the channel and go up the river each season. After spawning, they come down into Muskegon Lake, and all summer long, fishermen bring in great strings of large and small-mouth bass, pickerel and pike. Muskegon Lake, too, boasts the famous muscallonge, and every season large numbers of these mighty fish are brought to gaff. Last season's largest "Muskie" weighed forty-eight pounds.

Up Muskegon River, reached by launch, are some of the finest trout streams in Michigan. Muskegon River, too, is famous for its bass and pickerel. The state fish commission liberally stocks Muskegon's lakes and river and her trout streams every year with "fry," and owing to rigid enforcement of the law in the closed season, the fishing grows better every year.

For the ladies and gentlemen who like to fish, Muskegon Lake is a paradise. Bluegills and perch may be caught anywhere along the shore, or in any part of the lake. There are literally millions of these prolific fish, weighing from a few ounces up to two pounds or more.

After fishing in Muskegon Lake and River and the trout streams, there yet remains for the angler another lake, joined to Muskegon Lake by Bear Creek, a wide, deep stream less than a quarter mile long and navigable to either launch or row-boat. This is Bear. The stranger on Muskegon Lake might pass its entrance a hundred times without suspecting that less than a quarter of a mile away, beyond the trees, there was a lake over a mile long and half a mile wide. The banks of Bear Lake are high and densely wooded and the bottom is deep and clean and sandy. The water is clear as crystal, and in its depths are the muscallonge, bass, pickerel and pike that have made Bear Lake this synonym for "big fish that didn't get away."

Pictures from Page 7-

Pictures from page 9-

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PICNIC GROUNDS

Returning to Muskegon Lake from Bear Lake, to the left of Bear Creek channel, rises a bluff covered with trees. This is the famous Interlake Park, lying a little over a mile from the shore of Lkae Michigan and between Bear Lake and Muskegon Lake. It is a strip of high, wooded, level ground facing a lake on either side and swept by the breezes from Lake Michigan on the west. Interlake Park has been for years a favorite picnic ground. Its trees rise above a caret of soft grass without underbrush or weeds. From the edge of the bluff on one side can be seen all of Bear Lake, and beyond it the blue expanse of grand Lake Michigan. On the other side is Muskegon Lake, and from the light house at the channel, all along the shore and as far as the mouth of Muskegon River, is spread the panorama of Muskegon City with her six miles of water front.

Interlake Park has recently been platted into lots, and now without disturbing its natural beauty, it is to be the site of a great summer colony. It is reached either by a well-kept road around Muskegon Lake, a beautiful ride among the trees, or by steamers or launches that run across Muskegon Lake. Interlake is within fifteen minutes' boat ride of all Muskegon's stores, markets and pleasures, and yet is as secluded from the world as if it were ten miles away in the woods.

Muskegon and Bear Lakes afford not opnly excellent fishing, but other water sports as well. A launch can run for fifteen miles up Muskegon River, every turn of the screw disclosing some new beauty on the river's banks. The shores of Bear and Muskegon Lakes may be explored in search of the wild fruits and flowers that grow there in profusion, and on a calm day the launch may be taken through the channel and run south along the shore of Lake Michigan, past Lake Michigan Park and four miles beyond to the channel that leads into Mona Lake. Yachting, too, is a favorite sport and is made safe by the land-locked harbors of Muskegon and Mona Lakes.

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TROLLEY RIDES

Taking a street car from any part of the city, and paying a fare of only 5 cents, one is carried through the beautiful residence section of Muskegon out into the woods, through Muskegon Heights and then into the woods again. Curving and twisting over the hills, the track runs along, until suddenly to the right, water glistens between the trees. In five minutes more the passenger is landed at Mona Lake Park.

AMUSEMENTS

At Mona Lake is a pavilion, restaurant, children's playground, bathing beach, and baseball park. The street car line passes them all. Without transfer or change of cars and all for a five-cent fare, one can ride from Lake Michigan Park to Mona Lake, a distance of twelve miles, through beautiful natural scenery for three-fourths of the way. On a summer evening the open cars are filled with people who spend two hours making the round trip merely for the pleasure of the ride in the fresh, clean air, or who stop off at either terminal to enjoy the Park.

STEAMBOATING

At Mona Lake Park is the landing for all Mona Lake steamers which ply from point to point around the lake. These steamers make regular and frequent trips from Mona Lake Landing to Lake Harbor Hotel on Lake Michigan, three miles away. They stop on the way at a half-dozen resorts and summer colonies.

Picture top of Page 12-

"Night Scene, Pomona Pavilion, Fruitport, Spring Lake"

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COTTAGES AND HOTELS

Mona Lake is a summer resort of the best class. Along its edge are a hundred cottages and hotels. Its shores are beautifully wooded and high, free both from mosquitoes and malarial dangers. Various parts of the lake are reached by beautiful drives. Mona Lake is an excellent fishing ground for bass and is especially adapted for casting. Its irregular shore with the wide reaches of cool water, lily pads and rushes, make a natural haunt for the hungry game fish. On Mona Lake, too, are launches and sailboats as well as the large number of row-boats belonging to the cottages and hotels. Mona Lake, like Muskegon and Bear Lakes, is stocked annually by the state fish commission with bass and pickerel, and like its sister lakes, the fishing grows better each succeeding year.

At Lake Harbor, where Mona Lake narrows to a winding channel fifty feet wide that empties into Lake Michigan a half mile away, is a great summer hotel. Its verandas overlook a wide sweep of sloping lawn running to the water's edge. A shaded walk leads for a half mile along the winding channel down to "The Beach" where old Lake Michigan rolls in her waves. Here are bathing pools for the children, a pavilion and covered rest seats. The great woods of "Hackley Park" stretch away to the southward and the bluffs rise fifty feet above the water and shut out the noisy, busy world.

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All along the channel walk, and further down the beach, are cottages and other hotels filled in summer time with resorters. Back of the Lake Harbor Hotel is an eighteen-hole golf course, one of the best in Michigan, tennis courts, dancing hall, children's playgrounds, orchards and gardens; and still farther on is Forest Park, a natural wooded fastness where many happy people have their summer homes. If you want society, you can have it at the summer hotels. If you wish cottage privacy, you can buy, build or rent a cottage that will fulfill the most exacting demands.

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DRIVES

From Lake Harbor and from all parts of Mona Lake, are beautiful drives to Muskegon and to surrounding resorts. The country is devoted largely to fruit growing and the well-kept gardens and fields are a constant source of delight.

Near Muskegon, as the maps in this book will show, are about twenty lakes, all reached by good roads, and all abounding in fish. In the immediate vicinity, too, forming the setting of which Muskegon is the central jewel, are a number of other resorts accessible by road, train and trolley car, so that the summer visitor in search of variety need spend no two days alike.

Did you ever stop to think what it would mean to take with you on vacation all the conveniences of home? How often have you returned from your summer outing and said: "I'm glad to be back in civilization again!" The call of the country, that draws men and women from the city's conveniences to the discomforts and monotony of the ordinary summer resort, is hard to understand.

Pictures from page 17-

Left to Right-

Episcopal Church and Rectory- Hackley Library -Soldier's & Sailors's Monument -Hackley Public School