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Ottawa Beach was established in June of 1886 when surveyor Albert Peck’s plat map of West Michigan Park was registered with Ottawa County Clerk William Kelly. What was the world like back in 1886?
Following the American Civil War (1861 - 1865) the beneficial effects of the industrial revolution , advances in science, medicine, transportation and technology combined to enable Americans to live longer healthier lives. People had time for leisure, recreation and travel. The railroads were in the midst of a period of unprecedented growth and expansion. Besides connecting small and large cities together and providing a cheap fast way to bring goods to market, the railroads would create destinations and attractions to encourage the leisurely middle class to travel. This is exactly how Ottawa Beach came into being.
Elsewhere in 1886...
Researchers Paul Ehrlich and Louis Pasteur utilized advances in organic chemistry to identify and attack viruses and microbes as the cause of certain diseases.
Heinrich Hertz continued his experiments with the transmission, reception and reflection of radio waves which ultimately lead to the inventions of radio, television and telecommunications.
Six year old Helen Keller, blind and deaf since age two, struggles to understand her environment until Anne Sullivan becomes her tutor in 1887.
The Statue of Liberty, a gift to the United States from France, is dedicated in New York Harbor by President Grover Cleveland.
Theodore Roosevelt, still a few years away from the American presidency, supports his family by writing. In 1885 and 1886 he completed two books: “Hunting Trips of a Ranchman” and a biography on Thomas Benton.
Otto Mergenthaler succeded on his fourth attempt to create an automated type setting machine. The linotype machine set a line of type from molten lead.
Apache warrior and chief Geronimo finally surrendered in 1886, thus ending the last significant Indian guerrilla action in the United States.
Baseball player Ty Cobb was born.
Robert Louis Stevenson wrote "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle created the fictional detective Sherlock Holmes.
The Canadian-Pacific Railway was completed.
The first patent number of 1886 was 333,494.
John S. Pemberton first introduced Coca-Cola in Atlanta, Georgia, by concocting a caramel-colored syrup in a three-legged brass kettle in his backyard. The first bottle of Coca-Cola was sold in stores in 1895.
Mexican muralist and husband of Frida Kahlo José Diego María Rivera Barrientos, known internationally as Diego Rivera, was born in Guanajuato, capital of the State of Guanajuato, in Mexico. In Europe, all the great impressionist painters were active. Pablo Picasso, the greatest painter of the 20th century, was five years old.
1886: putting our founding year into historical perspective.
