East Grand Rapids: The Lake That Built a Suburb
Near Grand Rapids, Michigan
East Grand Rapids has its roots in a lake. Reeds Lake, sitting just east of Grand Rapids, became a beloved summertime escape for city residents as early as the eighteen seventies, when the first lakeside pavilion appeared on its west shore. The Grand Rapids Street Railway Company saw opportunity and opened an amusement park on the lake in eighteen eighty-one, later called Ramona Park, an amusement destination that at its peak featured a wooden roller coaster, a miniature railway, a boat livery, and a theater pavilion seating seventeen hundred people.
Will Rogers performed there. Big bands played on the lake. The surrounding neighborhoods, originally part of Paris Township, voted to form the Village of East Grand Rapids in eighteen ninety-one.
It became a Home Rule City in nineteen twenty-six. Ramona Park ran its last season in nineteen fifty-five, but the lake is still there, and the city it drew into being is now one of the most affluent small cities in Michigan.
