Lake Maxinkuckee Its Intrigue History & Genealogy Culver, Marshall, Indiana

I Remember...The Out-of-Towners  



by John William Houghton
published in the Culver Citizen ca.1974-1974

Until the Great Depression (to choose an arbitrary date for the end of what must have been a long fading), tourism was Culver 's principal business. The stream of visitors came to Culver on six daily trains and frequent excursion specials; once here, they stayed in a set of hotels with names worthy of Dylan Thomas. The Arlington, which gave its name to Culver 's other railroad station; The Chadwick, which so dominated Long Point that the point was originally named for the hotel there (there were protests when the first map labeled Long Point was published); the Lakeside, Jungle, and Ralston's; Osborn's, the Bide-a-Wee, and the Palmer House -- or in the many cottages which crowded around the lake.

Of the two groups (the occasional visitors and the reg ular returning summer people), it was the reg ulars, the cottagers, who made the greatest mark. These people were a varied lot: they built small, practical houses, like those south of Long Point, and such fancif ul demi-mansions as the famous House of a Thousand Candles; politicians and writers, railroad tycoons (the managers of the Vandalia Railroad even had lake water shipped to their winter homes, when they had to be away from Culver ) and shopkeepers, they came from St. Louis and Chicago, Rochester and Madison (the Laniers had a home on Maxinkuckee). The best of them had a sense of responsibility to their summer community.

Most important of those responsible people was certainly the man who gave the town his name. Henry Harrison Culver was born in Madison County, Ohio, in 1840, and left home for St. Louis, with his brother, at the age of 15; some months after they arrived in Missouri, they took jobs as traveling salesmen for a cast-iron stove manufactured by the McReary brothers of Springfield, Illinois. As might be expected, this salesman eventually met a farmer's daughter, and he and Miss Emily Jane Hand were wed in 1864 at their home, about eight miles east of Lake Maxinkuckee.

After his marriage, Henry joined his brothers in several business ventures, none of which was very successful . In 1871, all of the brothers settled in St. Louis where, in 1881, they began the famous Wrought Iron Range Company (wrought iron holds up under heat better than cast iron). In that same year, Mr. Culver had a paralyzing stroke and retired. He spent two years traveling in search of a thorough test cure, until, in 1883, his wife convinced him to return to Maxinkuckee. Mr. Culver later reported to Daniel McDonald:

    "I spent the whole summer by the side of the lake...when fall came, I was a different man. It had such a glorious effect on my health that I determined to acquire property here. I bought 98 acres on the Northeast corner of the lake. The following year, I bought 208 acres...in 1888 I built a tabernacle, a hotel, and some cottages , and arranged to have a big series of religious meetings...I had revival meetings and lectures for the whole of that summer..."


Even after he abandoned this experiment in public enlightenment, Mr. Culver didn't keep all his land for his own purposes: forty acres were cleared, a track was laid out, a grandstand erected, and the whole facility was then turned over to the public for a fairground (interest eventually waned, and the property returned to the Culver estate).

In 1896, Mr. Culver founded his school; in that same year, Walker W. Winslow's father bought the Robert Dagget cottage. Walker became one of the most noted of the summer people and his wife provides these reminiscences of typical East Shore life:
    "Walker spent his youth sailing with the other young fry around the lake. He loved the lake so much that he wanted to spend his honeymoon there in 1913...His mother did not think it a proper place for a bride. There was no running water, oil lamps were used, the beds had shuck mattresses, and our clothes were hung on nails on the wall.

    "Truckers came over the gravel road, now 117, to our doors to sell provender. Most of the cottagers had a cook and a manservant, and ate their evening meal on the porches in candle-light.

    "The people who came to the lake at that time all lived elegantly at home and they carried on the usual manner of life at Maxinkuckee. They had an infant yacht club, bridge parties, and dinner parties. The tone was set then for a classic lake with substantial people.

    "In 1931, Walker wanted to recapture the sailing on the lake and at a dinner, at the Culver Inn, he invited the East Shore residents to help him. Then was founded the Maxinkuckee Yacht Club. The boats being sailed then were in Class C and Class E. The Academy had one large Class A boat (Ed. Note: It still does: I remember that the A scow was on the lake in the summer of `67 while I was in Naval School; my platoon leader and the girl's school crew capsized it). Colonel Miller from the Academy became the judge, and each Sunday morning the sailors scrubbed their boats and tried for the cups presented.

    "Walker loved the lake so much that he wanted it to have everything."


I think that almost as important as the golf course and the yacht club among the contributions of the summer people was the example of enjoying the lake as something more than a source of water and ice; it's usually true that it takes an out of towner to recognize the true advantages of a place, and Culver is no exception.

By way of imitating Lakewater's"-30-", I introduce my own sign-off: it's a phrase from the Sindarin language and means, "until I see you again":

tenn' ankennuvar