Raising the Roof: A History of the Buildings And Architecture in the Saugatuck And Douglas Area

James Schmiechen

Business & Money

Saugatuck Douglas Hist Society

<p>A rich collection of old photographs from the albums of Saugatuck-Douglas residents and vacationers.</p>

Snapshots-a Saugatuck Album: A Photographic History of Saugatuck, Michigan

Arts & Photography

Schmiechen, James

Kemperman, William

Photography & Video

<p>The stories of major and minor shipwrecks of the Saugatuck Michigan area, heroism, life-saving crews, tragedy, the boats.</p>

Storm, Fire, And Ice: Shipwrecks of the Saugatuck Area

History

Jack Sheridan

Kit Lane

Americas

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Off the Record: A Pictorial History of Saugatuck in the '40s And '50s-the Unpublished Photographs of Bill Simmons

Lane, Kit

Sheridan, Jack

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

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Books by Saugatuck Douglas Hist Society