A Small-Town Life: Grand Haven in the 1950s and 1960s Hardcover – April 26, 2025

.Grand Haven has a colorful past. One of the oldest towns in the state along the shores of Lake Michigan, within 30 years of its founding in 1834, over a dozen sprawling lumber mills lined the small town’s harbor along the Grand River. Logs were floated to them from far up the river, and converted into badly needed lumber for our country’s expanding frontier, and to rebuild Chicago after its great Fire of 1871.By the 1880s, Grand Haven’s harbor was home to a commercial fishing fleet that numbered over 50 sailing ships and tugs. Thirty years later – in 1910 – enormous Grand Trunk car ferries and Goodrich Steamships made daily runs to its harbor from Chicago and Milwaukee, and its riverfront was still a hive of activity.Dave Sawyer grew up in Grand Haven in the late 1950s and 60s, when its harbor’s heyday was long past, and its riverfront run down. It was a small town where families had lived for generations, a proud community with a historic downtown, that was just beginning the process of bringing its riverfront back to life. In this very personal account of his growing up years, Dave recounts what daily life was like in Grand Haven during this chapter of its long history. Before its riverfront was redeveloped, and before it’s popular boardwalk along the river to its historic lighthouse were built.In A Small-Town Life, his memories and stories of Grand Haven are richly illustrated by over 200 period photographs gleaned from the archives of the Tri-Cities Historical Museum and the Loutit Library. Read more