Tipton's Roadside Stop: The Davenport House

Along US Twelve near the unincorporated hamlet of Tipton stands a wooden hotel that began as a log tavern in eighteen thirty-four. The Chicago Road, surveyed in eighteen twenty-nine and built through southern Michigan from eighteen thirty, was the main overland route between Detroit and Chicago, and every few miles a tavern keeper set up shop to feed and shelter travelers on what was often a muddy, exhausting journey of several days. Henry Sisson built the first log structure here, then sold it in eighteen thirty-nine to John Davenport, a local mill owner who owned it until eighteen sixty-four; the hotel building that stands today was likely built around eighteen sixty-one. Known as Bauer Manor in later years, it has been a Michigan State Historic Site since nineteen seventy-one and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in two thousand seven.