It is said that in Michigan, you are never more than 6 miles away from water. Here in Lansing, while you may be in the "Great Lakes State," the closest you are to any one of the Great Lakes is Huron, about a 70 mile drive. So our answer is Lake Lansing, a 461-acre freshwater lake here in Ingham County near the town of Haslett. After Lansing the closest larger lake is Duck Lake, almost 25 miles southeast, so this is the best we have. Lake Lansing in particular has a long history, a majority of which centers right here at Lake Lansing Park South. This cache is dedicated to the history of Lake Lansing, once known as Pine Lake.
Ingham County is the ancestral homeland of the Anishinaabe people, particularly the Three Fires Confederacy which was a union between the Odawa, Potawatomi, and Ojibwes. This specific area was part of their hunting and fishing grounds for centuries. On the north end of Lake Lansing are ancient Native American burial grounds that predate even Chief Okemos' tribe, around the intersection of W Reynolds Rd and Lee St, a rounded area two to three feet high connected to a battle by legend.
On November 1, 1836, Obed Marshall and his brother, the first settlers in Meridian Township, purchased 160 acres south and west of Lake Lansing for $318 (over $11,000 today adjusted for inflation). They built a log cabin on the west side of the lake in 1837, which was the second home ever constructed in Ingham County. Around this time, many settlers began to purchace parcels of land in the area, which was at the time dense wilderness abundant with deer, bear, and wolves.Meridian Township was organized in 1842 with a population of just fifty, and the first roads such as Grand River Ave. and Okemos Rd. began to be laid out. The area was agricultural, growing predominantly wheat, rye, dairy, corn, potatoes, and maple syrup.
In 1871, the Chicago and Northeastern Railroad Company began construction of a line between Lansing and Flint. They built the Pine Lake Station House across the tracks from the present station in 1878, which allowed a community of 35 families, a schoolhouse, a post office, and a hotel on the north shore of the lake to begin growing. This allowed lumber, livestock, wool, grain, and beans to be shipped from Pine Lake.
In the 1880s, Spiritualists established a 20-acre park west of Lake Lansing to be a retreat, named Haslett Park after one of the landowners in the area, James Haslett. Spiritualism was a movement that believed that you could communicate with the spirits of the dead through mediums, a product of the Second Great Awakening partially founded by the famous Fox sisters. This retreat could attract anywhere from 2,000 to 4,000 on weekend days, and the Pine Lake railroad grew to accomodate them, resulting in the community of Pine Lake being renamed Haslett Park. Facilities included the auditorium, which could seat 2000, two hotels and a dormitory, a dining hall, a Séance Hall where believers would commune with spirits, a horse barn, and boating facilities. Later added was a large circular covered pavilion known as the "Casino" which extended out over Lake Lansing. The area continued to steadily grow as a tourist destination, with steamboats such as the "Belle Haslett" offering rides on Lake Lansing.
In the late 1890s, a group of Lansing businessmen built a men's social club known as the Izzer Club in the center of Lake Lansing. The clubhouse was a two story square building with a porch on all sides. Supposedly, within this club there was a trapdoor that would dunk unwilling guests into the lake below, as well as murder victims and alcohol during the Prohibition era. This clubhouse was allegedly used by the mob, and legendary mobsters Al Capone and Mickey Cohen were reported to have visited Lake Lansing at some point around the 1920s.
The Interurban, an electric trolley car that once served the Lansing area, expanded to Pine Lake in 1904. They were open car trolleys that went through the countryside to the Michigan Agricultural College, now Michigan State University, then west into the city of Lansing. With the rise of the automobile, the trolley line fell out of favor and stopped running in 1929. Many who had formerly visited Pine Lake on vacation were able to travel further north to larger lakes, and the Spiritualist camp began to decline. In 1930, its name was changed from Pine Lake to Lake Lansing.
The amusement park was founded by the Michigan Catering Company in the early 1910s. The park changed hands a number of times and added amusement rides such as the Cyclone, a 65-foot figure-eight roller coaster, as well as a carousel, pony rides, a mini-railroad, concession stands, a Tilt-A-Whirl, and bumper cars. In 1974, facing financial challenges, the park closed for good and its rides were either demolished or sold. The park's carousel is still in operation at Cedar Point in Sandusky, Ohio.
For more information, see the following links:
www.migenweb.org/ingham/photos/LakeLansingAmusementPark
www.cadl.org/lhonline/AHistoryoftheHaslettandLakeLansingArea
The cache is located at the end of the fishing pier. You do not have to get wet to find this cache, and swimming is not allowed in this part of the park. It's a bison tube.
FTF: CacheNCottrellz
STF: HelloLola
TTF: -