West Shore Ferry

Location: Campbell Road at Ferry Street
Date: 1900-1925

From 1900 to 1925 George Tisdale ran a motorboat ferry, named the West Shore Ferry, from the foot of Campbell Rd to foot of Butler Street. Several gas driven passenger launches, named “West Shore” and “Isabel” took residents of the ‘west shore’ (largely Lakeshore Drive summer folks) back and forth across the wide span of the Lake Kalamazoo. The boats had hard canopy tops and side curtains for rainy weather and customers summoned the ferry on the opposite shore by means of a semaphore. Tisdale was a retired ship’s captain himself, and settled into the family home nearby on the west shore of Lake Kalamazoo.