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The entire contents of this internet document are Copyright 2003 by the Ottawa Beach Historic Committee.
Website designed, written and constructed by Dan Aument

Ottawa Beach is an eighty acre historic resort community neighborhood, making it one of the largest historic sites in our state. Ottawa Beach was platted in 1886 by the West Michigan Park Association and was largely developed between then and 1930. The plat provided for three types of land usage - cottage lots, a hotel site and open spaces known as parks to be owned in common by members of the Association. Each cottage was adjacent to one of these parks, which have retained their natural undeveloped character. The Chicago and West Michigan Railway (later the Pere Marquette Railroad) played a key role in the development of Ottawa

With only a couple of exceptions, the several avenues and boulevards indicated on the plat map exist only as concrete sidewalks or, in the case of Terrace Avenue, as an undulating elevated wooden boardwalk. Many of the cottages on Terrace Avenue and elsewhere in the plat are accessible only on foot. No records have survived regarding the factors the land owners considered when planning this unique resort community.

Click here for a photo of Terrace Avenue in the 1960‘s.

The people who initially enjoyed Ottawa beach were the members of the Ottawa, Chippewa and Pottawatomi tribes. In 1821, their chiefs ceded the land south of the Grand River to the US government thereby opening the land to non Native American settlers. The land was surveyed in 1832 by government surveyor Calvin Brittan, who was sufficiently impressed with the Lake Macatawa area to purchase the beach front lands later developed as the Macatawa and Ottawa Beach cottage and resort areas. The properties highlighted in yellow on the map at the left were the lands owned by surveyor Brittan. Note the narrow curved channel connecting Lake Macatawa with Lake Michigan.

The early Dutch settlers of Holland and their leaders could see the value of developing Lake Macatawa into a navigable harbour. In 1849, they paid for a survey of the channel, the map of which shows two possible locations for a new straight channel between “Black Lake or Ma-Ca-Ta-Wa” and Lake Michigan. The reverend Mr. Albertus. C. Van Raalte successfully petitioned the federal government on several occasions for the appropriation of funds for the creation and maintenance of the channel between Lake Macatawa and Lake Michigan. The original channel was judged unsuitable for navigation and a new straighter channel was dug from Lake Macatawa into Lake Michigan.