In 1998, the Saugatuck-Douglas Historical Society received a collection of nearly 3,000 photographs shot in and around Saugatuck by Bill Simmons before, during, and after he served as editor of the Saugatuck Commercial Record. Since most of the photographs existed in negative form only and had never been printed or published in the paper, the collection is both literally and figuratively "off the record." Members of the society have selected 157 representative images from this collection to create the most extensive visual history of Saugatuck in the 1940s and 1950s. Unlike earlier photographers who separate Saugatuck's townscape and landscape from its citizenry, Simmons shows how people interacted with the local geography, villagelife, and work. For those who lived there during the same time as Simmons, the photographs collected in "Off the Record" will recall particular nostalgic events, people, and locales. For all readers these images of a half-century ago add new meaning and insight into our history and remind us how photographs shape the way we identify and define our past.

Off the Record: A Pictorial History of Saugatuck in the '40s And '50s-the Unpublished Photographs of Bill Simmons

Arts & Photography

Schmiechen, James

Lane, Kit

Sheridan, Jack

Photography & Video

Saugatuck Douglas Hist Society

In the tumultuous 1830s, Michigan struggled to construct new towns, railroads, canals, and ports, establish a new banking system, and become a state, all at once. Around Saugatuck in western Michigan, many towns were created and abandoned within the decade. The departed residents and industries haunt the printed pages of old maps and litter the countryside with buried remains of old civilizations. "Lost and Found: Ghost Towns" of the Saugatuck Area honors some of these towns and separates fact from myth without destroying the air of mystery around these towns. Some of the towns included in "Lost and Found", like Naples and Breese, never made it beyond elegant maps created to entice investors. Others, like the small sawmill settlement of Singapore, had struggling settlers who lost their fight for survival and disappeared before the dawn of the twentieth century. Other formerly successful towns disappeared swiftly because of a sudden environmental or economic disruption. "Lost and Found" tells the story of towns that cannot be visited but which influenced the history of the Saugatuck area and its people.

Lost & Found : Ghost Towns of the Saugatuck Area

Simonds, Robert C.

Cookbooks, Food & Wine

Beginning in the 1890s, hundreds of city artists, mostly from Chicago, flocked to the Saugatuck-Douglas area for its unspoiled lakes, forests, dunes, and picturesque villages. The great industrial boom in large cities like Chicago and Detroit led to a shocking increase in wealth and mechanization but also brought overcrowding, noise, and dirt. These urban artists sought escape from the complexities of city life and came to believe that the wholesomeness of the natural landscape and "the life of the plain people" represented the genuine America. By 1930, so many city artists arrived every summer that several art schools were organized in Saugatuck, including the Ox-Bow Summer School of Painting, established by painters from the Art Institute of Chicago. Several artists from the summer schools earned national and regional recognition, including Claes Oldenburg, LeRoy Neiman, Francis Chapin, Carl Hoerman, Alfred Krehbiel, John Norton, and William Greason. Illustrated with black-and-white and color reproductions of paintings of Saugatuck-Douglas and its surrounding landscape, "Painting the Town" also includes biographies of 90 artists known to have worked in the area since 1890. This book also explores the role of the artist as historian, since the paintings and sketches included have helped Saugatuck to define and memorialize its landscape and its past.

Painting the Town: A History of Art in Saugatuck and Douglas

History & Criticism

The second volume of the Saugatuck Maritime Series, this book traces the history of the board that carried passengers between Chicago and Saugatuck beginning with the Huron in 1859 until the final departure of the Goodrich line in 1929. Also included in this volume the museum ship S. S. Keewatin, the history of the chain ferry, and others associated with the Lake Michigan port of Saugatuck.

The Dustless Road to Happyland: Chicago-Saugatuck Passenger Boats 1859-1929 (Suagatuck Maritime Series Vol 2)

Business & Money

Pavilion Pr

Saugatuck Maritime Series Book 3. The Chicora of the Graham &amp; Morton Transportation Co. left Milwaukee on January 21, 1895, and disappeared in a raging gale. The story is chronicled as it happened, day by day, with contemporary newspaper and telegraph reports. Illustrated by photographs, engravings, newspaper stories and headlines, maps and facsimiles of the hand written messages discovered on the beaches of Lake Michigan following the tragedy.

Chicora: Lost on Lake Michigan (Saugatuck maritime series)

History

Americas

Pavilion Press

Saugatuck Maritime Series, Book 4. A chronological listing of shipwrecks on the southeastern shore of Lake Michigan 1821 to 1980. Illustrated with many vessel photographs and drawings.

Lake Michigan Shipwrecks: South Haven to Grand Haven

Singapore was a lumbering town near the mouth of the Kalamazoo River in Michigan. It was founded in 1836 and once bustled with two active mills,a harbor full of boats, a store, and a bank which printed its own currency.By 1875 the lumber had been cut and the mills moved on. Gradually Singapore was carted away. What little was left has been covered by the blowing sand.

Buried Singapore: Michigan's imaginary Pompeii

John Allen came to Michigan in 1823 and was co-founder of Ann Arbor, later the home of the University of Michigan. He dabbled in many other town plats, always looking for his fortune and had a hand in the political process of early Michigan. In 1850, still struggling with financial problems he left for the gold fields of California.

John Allen: Michigan's Pioneer Promoter

The second "Tales" books which features interesting stories of Saugatuck, a small town on the shore of Lake Michigan in southewestern Michigan and its sister city across the Kalamazoo River, Douglas. This one describes famous people who lived or visited the area including Susan B. Anthony, Thor Heyerdahl, Carl Sandburg, Amelia Earhart, and D. K. Ludwig, once the richest man in the world, who got his start selling popcorn at a Saugatuck dance pavilion.

The Popcorn Millionaire and Other Tales of Saugatuck

Lucius Lyon came to Michigan in 1822 from his native Vermont and proved a useful citizen in many areas of early Michigan history. He surveyed much of the lower peninsula of Michigan, traveling by foot and horseback in the winter, when frozen water made the swamps easier to traverse. He served in the U.S. Congress as a delegate of Michgan Territory. He was an influential member of the Constitutional Convention of 1835 and went to Washington as a newly elected state senator to fight for recognition of Michigan's statehood, a process that would take nearly two years. As a land speculator he had a hand in the founding of many Michigan settlements including Grand Rapids, Kalamazoo, and Ypsilanti. As an innovative farmer he was the first to introduce the sugar beet to Michigan agriculture.

Lucius Lyon: An Eminently Useful Citizen

Biographies & Memoirs

Regional U.S.

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