Saugatuck Chain Ferry

Location: Mary at Water Street, Saugatuck
Date: Established 1857. Photo 1908

For Saugatuck people on the east side of the Kalamazoo River the only way to travel south to Douglas (or even Chicago) was by rowboat across the Kalamazoo River. Around 1833 a bridge was built at Mary Street—but it was so relentlessly battered by logs being pushed downstream and by the many schooners moving past it that it crashed into the river in 1856—leading to the invention of the now famous Saugatuck Chain Ferry in 1857.

The ferry was a flat barge-type boat called a “scow”—large enough to hold a wagon and team of horses, passengers, and eventually automobiles. An underwater chain connected the ferry to its opposite landings and passed through a hand-cranked wench that moved it along the chain. Crossing was often dangerous and crowded. The ferryman was the pilot but it was usually a boy called the ’cranker’ who provided the power by turning the wench. The trip cost 5 cents. Eventually grocery and refreshment stores existed at the ferry landings, and little factories settled around it on both sides. Mrs. Heath sold cupcakes at the ferry store in the 1920s.

Over time the ferryman became a part of the legend of Saugatuck: a storyteller, musician, seller of various goods, and even puppeteer. The poets Lincoln Steffens, Carl Sandburg, and others sang their praises, and the ferry was one of the most photographed scenes of the village.

Mr. R. J. Peterson built the present ferry in 1965. The chances for adventure continue.