Name/Title
Mt. Baldhead Hotel signEntry/Object ID
2026.01.21Description
Red and black painted sign for the Mount Baldhead Hotel with additional text "On river bank 1 block from noise of pike." The sign is surrounded with a black frame.Context
Interpretive label from "Collecting the Lakeshore" 2025-2026 at the History Center main floor gallery.
Tourists Home and Mount Baldhead Hotel
The Tourists Home and later Mount Baldhead Hotel appears in numerous artworks throughout this exhibit. The building occupied a prominent place between the Kalamazoo riverfront and Water Street from 1900 until its destruction by fire in 1959. The site then became home to the Ship n Shore “Boatel” in 1960.
Saugatuck maintained a “working waterfront” along the Kalamazoo River into the mid-twentieth century. The hotel that appears as a yellow or weathered two-story wooden frame structure was assembled from a warehouse moved from Singapore, a blacksmith shop, and parts of a Saugatuck basket factory. It operated from 1901 as the Tourists Home until the mid-1920s. In 1933 it “rebranded” as the Mount Baldhead Hotel.
The roadside Mount Baldhead Hotel sign below dates from the 1930s prior to the opening of Blue Star Highway in 1936. The “noise” described on the sign references the West Michigan “Pike” that ran along Butler Street through Saugatuck from the 1910s.Collection
Signs, 1930+ Tourism, lodging, hotels and B&Bs, Transportation: highway and road infrastructureCataloged By
Winthers, SallyAcquisition
Accession
2026.01Notes
This item has been in the possession of the SDHS since at least 2008.Relationships
Related Person or Organization
Person or Organization
Mt. Baldhead Hotel 1933-1959/Tourists' Home 1901Interpretative Labels
Label
From "Signs of the Times: Old Signs from the Saugatuck & Douglas Area, A Collaborative Exhibition Presented by the Saugatuck Center for the Arts and the Saugatuck-Douglas Historical Society" 2008, Krista Reuter & Jim Schmiechen, curators
4. sign: Mt. Baldhead Hotel
original site: Ship ‘n Shore Motel, 528 Water Street, Saugatuck
collection:Saugatuck-Douglas Historical Society Collection
With large porches, boat docks and a riverside garden, this large hotel was cobbled together out of a nearby warehouse, a blacksmith shop, and a basket factory. Originally opened as the Tourist Home Hotel in 1901, it was owned and operated by Harry and Rhea Allen Jackson from the 1920s to 1955 when Ruth and Bud Edgcomb ran it until it was destroyed by fire in 1959.Create Date
September 19, 2026Update Date
September 21, 2026
