Early Douglas Industry and Docks

Location: Wade’s Mill & Hotel-Tavern & Wade’s Bayou, Douglas
Date: 1851

Looking south to Douglas from Saugatuck, about 1892

This photo shows, right to left, the new bridge (1869), Douglas Union School (top, right), Douglas Basket Factory (formerly Wade’s Mill (to left of bridge), Dutcher Lodge/Village Hall, boxed windmill (Center and Main Streets), Douglas House Tavern and Hotel (formerly Wade’s/Eagle Tavern), waterside docks and warehouses, and (top left) Gerber Tannery. Gerber & Moore flour mill (at waterfront) was destroyed by fire in 1891.

Jonathan and Fanny Wade were among the first settlers in Douglas, having come from the nearby mill settlement of Singapore where he had operated the first mill at that site. In Douglas he built a mill (which later became the basket factory), a boarding house, a hotel-tavern, and very small “plank” house for his family (1851) which still exists. The hotel-tavern had several names over the years, one of which was “Eagle House, possibly a reference to London’s most famous tavern at the time. All of these structures looked out upon a large bay in the upper Lake Kalamazoo which has been called “Wade’s Bayou.” One part of the bayou served as a holding pond for logs for the mill. These pond posts can still be seen from Wade’s Bayou Park in Douglas.

Additional industrial activity in early Douglas:
Lumber Mill
Basket Factory
Two Grist (flour) Mills
Furniture Factory
Shipping Warehouses
Fruit Drying House
Leather Tannery
Village Jail