Jimmy Haile’s Stage Stop & Tavern

Location: Weed’s Orchard and Fernwood Resort
Lakeshore Drive, Saugatuck Township
Date: 1840 / 1860-80

Jimmy Haile’s Stage Stop & Tavern. Jimmy Haile was one of the Vermont “Green Mountain Boys” of 1812 who came to Michigan to speculate in land and lumber. With his wife, Martha, he operated a boarding house-stage stop-tavern that was the center of early lakeshore life, known for its Saturday night suppers and dances. Of vertical timber plank construction, covered with horizontal siding. At a later date the house was a boys’ school.

Joshua Weed House and Fernwood Resort. Joshua Weed began his career as a builder (including the mill and church at Pier Cove, the mills at Jimmy Hailes and nearby Singapore) and then as a farmer he purchased 124 acres of land in 1874 which he planted as orchards. He was one of the founders of the Douglas Basket factory. The house was later (1880) moved from across the Lakeshore road to its present site and enlarged and became the family-run resort “Fernwood”—complete with a pier on Lake Michigan to accept travelers and to transport fruit to market. One son became an accomplished musician, another the owner of the Douglas Basket Factory, and another one of the owners of Saugatuck’s Big Pavilion.