Lenawee County History: Wayside Inn short-lived hotel at lake resort
At the Manitou Beach lake resort, several hotels stand out as not only large in size, but duration in service.
The Devils Lake Yacht Club, formerly the Pleasant Grove Hotel, still stands as it has since 1880. The Lake View Hotel, The Club, and the Lake Rest resort were also popular in the 1800s into the early 1900s.
One nondescript near Orchard Grove on the south shore of Devils Lake, however, came and went in about 35 years, with few pictures and even less information about its existence.
The Wayside Inn was built around 1900 by Thomas Conway and was operated as a seasonal clubhouse. Known at the time as the Fairview Hotel, or informally the “Club House,” Conway later made headlines in 1913 by storing illegal quantities of beer in a nearby boathouse, a violation of the local option law at the time. He had been operating illegally from April 1910 until February 1913. He was sentenced to four months “in the Detroit work house,” according to The Daily Telegram at the time.
By April 1922, the owners of the inn, on account of ill health, put the building on the real estate market. E. H. VanArsdalen bought the Wayside Inn in May 1922.
The inn was back on the real estate rolls by January 1927, priced at $5,500 and included four boats. While for sale, it remained open throughout 1927 and 1928 as the Metcalf real estate agency, then E.W. Skeese of Adrian, tried to offload the building. However, it was closed down in 1929, where it would sit idle for two years.
The Wallace Angell family of Adrian in the spring of 1931 bought the inn and spent the next few weeks remodeling the three-story, 10-bedroom hotel. It was reopened by Memorial Day weekend and served as a summer resort to the expanding tourism trade. In December 1931, Angell built a 180-foot toboggan slide as part of plans to offer the property up as a destination over the winter months. A large fireplace was also built “to provide warmth and cheer for skating, skiing and card parties,” the Telegram reported in its Dec. 8, 1931, edition.
The inn, however, burned Feb. 25, 1935, the cause of which was unknown. The fire was discovered around 5 p.m. by sisters Nora and Jessie Imerson, who lived near the hotel. They spotted fire in the roof and called the Addison Fire Department. Firefighters chopped a hole in the ice to draw water, but were unable to get ahead of the advancing flames. The hotel’s front door had been opened to get furniture and belongings out, but the open door created a draft that acted like a chimney, accelerating the flames beyond defeat. With the exception of a brief jump of flames to Howard Ely’s garage nearby, no other buildings were damaged or destroyed.
Wallace Angell had been at the hotel earlier in the morning, but reported he had not done anything except walk through the building.
Today, the former site of the Wayside Inn is a line of lakefront houses that grow in size as the years go by.
Dan Cherry is a Lenawee County historian.
This article originally appeared on The Daily Telegram: Lenawee County History: Wayside Inn short-lived hotel at lake resort
