I drove around the Devils Lake area a couple weeks ago for another book project I’m working on, and while winding between the lakes, I had a flashback to life 40 years ago.
We weren’t well-to-do back in the day, so for a break from the weekly schedule, we would sometimes take a slow drive around the lake to see the sights.
It was at a time when you could actually see the lake from the road, when there were small cottages and empty lots, when the speed limit was observed and you could take a “Sunday drive” and not be subjected to road rage … or golf cart rage.
On a weekend evening, scores of people would be sitting in their lawn chairs, enjoying the sunset, walking along the street and visiting with neighbors. You waved at those you knew, sometimes stopped to visit for a few minutes. Occasionally, the trek included a stop at the Dairy King ice cream stand, Richardson’s Pizza or Tibbs IGA. If gas was needed, a quick stop was made at Kenny Lytton’s full-service station, where Kenny himself would come out and fill the gas tank with a wave and a smile. In the 1970s, he still wore the change dispenser on his belt.
The trip was usually a counter-clockwise adventure, passing the drive-in theater before turning left on Round Lake Highway and past the imposing Devils Lake Yacht Club, which at that time could still be seen from the highway. There has always been a basketball hoop at Pleasant Grove, back to at least the early 1960s, and it stands there yet today. Along the lake were “Michigan cottages,” seasonal one-story or two-story cottages with an occasional year-round home. At one cottage, the owner had a mannequin in the picture window, fashioned into an old man with a stick-cane. They would dress him out occasionally, which made for good fun as a child to see what was next. It was then a guessing game as to who would go first across the one-lane bridge at the channel between the lakes. The tepee house was the marking point that the trip was half-over, and as you passed around Sandy Beach, you had a good, clear view of the lake and its activities, mostly people making lazy trips in pontoons or fishermen getting in the last line casts of the weekend. The end-marker for the trip was the Clearwater Beach Arch, which spanned Robinwood Court at what the locals called “the head of the lake.” Across the street was the Lighthouse Inn, the last 1 1/2 stories of the old White Swan Tower. In the 1930s and 1940s, it was a nine-story attraction built to capitalize on the popularity of the nearby Irish Hills Towers.
Then, it was back home.
The arch is gone, knocked down in 2009 by a too-tall truck, and the inn was demolished in 2001 to allow for more parking at the Devils Lake Golf Course. Kenny Lytton and his store at the corner of Chestnut Street and Devils Lake Highway is also long gone. The Tibbs store came down a couple years ago, and many of the old-style Michigan cottages are now three and, in a few cases, four-story homes, built so close together in some places you can no longer see the lake except for very narrow glimpses between the mini-towers. “Expensive” cottages at the lake 40, 45 years ago were $100,000. Today, it’s not uncommon for a dwelling at Devils Lake to edge toward $750,000 or even $1 million. The last few listings I saw were all in the $1.2-$1.3 million range.
What is called the Manitou Beach “village district” was only Richardson’s Pizza and the Manitou Inn when I was young. Today, it is an impressive, sprawling collection of shops that, in that small area, invoke feelings of walking through a harbor town.
The feelings of reliving days gone by were strong as I made the drive, having to pull over a few times to let a faster car (or golf cart) go by. I got my modern-day photos for my upcoming then-and-now book, documenting the 2023 Devils Lake to be the history people in 2073 will wonder about, just as I wax nostalgia about 1983 and the ever-changing face that is a drive around Devils Lake.
Dan Cherry is a Lenawee County historian.
