Established in 1890, the Lake Madison Chautauqua Association was a corporation patterned after the original Chautauqua in New York and one of the first Chautauquas west of Chicago. It purchased 60 acres of the old Baker homestead from J. A. Trow, known as Morena Beach, platted the grounds, set out trees, and built the 40-room Grand View Hotel, the 2500-seat Auditorium, a cafeteria, and a dance hall. It grew from a white city of 200 tents and stables for 200 horses into a summer resort of 125 cottages. For 40 years it presented a high-grade program for two weeks each summer, often drawing 3000 attendees and 10000 on July 4th. Excursion trains came on special days from 500 miles away, and visitors also used a narrow gauge motor track from Madison and later a spur of Milwaukee track. Its platform was an open forum that helped bring favorable notice to Madison and Lake County. Among its noted speakers were T. DeWitt Talmage, W. J. Bryan, William H. Taft, Booker T. Washington, General John B. Gordon, Robert M. LaFollette, Eugene V. Debbs, Russell H. Conwell, Sam Jones, Bishop Hartzell, Father Cleary, Frank R. Roberson, and D. W. Robertson. The first moving pictures in South Dakota were seen there. Its first president was J. H. Williamson, with E. C. Whalen as secretary and J. L. Jones as treasurer, and its directors and stockholders included many prominent men and women of the state. For many years it graduated a class from its four-year course in the Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle. The state W. C. T. U. built its headquarters there, called Clarence Hall. After difficult early years, it was saved financially and managed for more than 30 years by Captain H. P. Smith and his son Geo. G. Smith, but with the coming of the automobile, moving pictures, and radio, the programs ended and the grounds passed into private ownership for cottages and playgrounds.