Sandy Beach / Baw Beese Lake

People began using Sandy Beach as a popular but informal swimming spot in the mid-nineteenth century. In 1955, nine Hillsdale County residents formed the Baw Beese Memorial Park Association to acquire and convert the area into a public beach. Using money from fundraising drives, they purchased the land from Edwin and Mae Leypoldt of Cleveland, Ohio. Hillsdale City Recreation Director James Inman organized work groups to clear brush, widen the beach, and create picnic areas, with area high school students forming one group. Local volunteer carpenters, electricians, bricklayers, painters, and plumbers built the beach house using donated materials, and it was later altered to include a concession stand. In 2013, the Hillsdale Rotary Club began a multi-year beach improvement project that included renovating the beach house. According to early Hillsdale County histories, Baw Beese Lake was named for Baw Beese, the leader of a Potawatomi band that lived nearby while hunting and fishing in the area. Non-Natives who began living there in the early nineteenth century described Baw Beese as generous and friendly. In 1840, Baw Beese and his people were forced to move to Iowa, then Kansas, under the Indian Removal Act of 1830. The area soon became a popular picnic, fishing, and swimming spot for settlers and their descendants. In 1892, the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railroad built a resort on the lake's northern shore with a boathouse, lunch counter, dance pavilion, hotel, docks, picnic areas, and a toboggan run. Excursion trains from nearby cities brought visitors to the resort's gates. The resort closed in 1915, and the buildings were dismantled.

Hillsdale, Michigan · United States