While many cities in mid-Michigan are named for their founders, Grand Ledge got its name from two natural formations in the area: the Grand River, and the mile-long stretch of 40-foot rocky outcroppings that border it.
These ledges are the only natural outdoor rock-climbing environment in the Lower Peninsula.
But these cliffs aren’t the only thing that make Grand Ledge a city worth visiting.
A tourist town in the 1800s
In the late 1800s and early 1900s, the village of Grand Ledge was a tourist destination.
The Seven Islands Resort, which opened in the 1870s, spanned the length of the seven finger islands in the Grand River.
The resort featured a hotel, a casino, an animal park filled with bears and deer, and a mineral spring with alleged curative properties.
It was also the home of Michigan’s first-ever rollercoaster, which stretched over the second and third islands of the resort.
Unfortunately, just two years after the amusement ride was built, a flood in the Grand River in 1893 wrecked the structure. Now all that remains are local bike racks fashioned to look like the rollercoaster.
By the early 1900s and with the rising popularity of the automobile, people began to look further from home for their vacations, and the Seven Islands Resort closed in 1910.
Attractions of the 21st century
Despite the closure of the Seven Islands Resort, Grand Ledge hosts multiple annual events to draw visitors downtown.
One of the most popular is the Fall Festival.
“The Fall Festival has been here for quite a while,” Stefanie Black, marketing coordinator for the Grand Ledge Area District Library, said. “It used to take place at the second island, which is over, well, that way.”
I met Black while visiting the library to learn more about the city’s history, but the Fall Festival is more of an indication of the city’s future.
“The whole town kind of gets into it,” Black said. “All the downtown businesses now will like do sales, and there's some places downtown that have local artisans and beekeepers and food people.”
Black moved to Grand Ledge as a single parent to their son in 2018. They said the Fall Festival wasn’t the only thing that attracted them to the town.
“The school system here has been really fantastic for my child," they said. “Grand Ledge’s schools, especially the high school, has been really great for helping him and being supportive of who he is and everything.”
The great outdoors
The second and third islands were joined by a wide causeway into one large island, now the home of Island Park.
I made my way to the local park, where the Fall Festival used to be held, and there I met Carla Lohr.
Lohr has lived in Grand Ledge for 30 years, and for the last year she’s visited Island Park every day to spend time with the large flock of white Embden geese that call the island home.
“There's four of them have bands where they take them in, and they check them all out, make sure everything's up to snuff, and then they release them again,” she said. "If they show any kind of illness, then they have to go through everyone.”
The geese have lived at the park for decades now, and while the fowl are a traditionally domesticated animal, they’ve been on their own for long enough to be considered part of the wildlife.
Their large size, piercing blue eyes, and serrated tongue and beaks may look intimidating to some, but Lohr isn’t afraid.
“They get too close to the fingers, just pinches, no big deal,” she said. “One of the girls was telling me today, ‘Oh, you be careful feeding those ducks. They'll attack you.’ Please, attack what?”
Of course, the geese aren’t Lohr’s only friends in Grand Ledge. In fact, she said it’s a rather friendly city.
“All in all, this is a nice town to live in,” Lohr said. “It really is, and the people are good, but we still have exceptions, like every town.”
Before heading back downtown, I visited Fitzgerald Park, the home of the ledges that gave the city its name.
There’s a trail along the Grand River from Fitzgerald Park to Oaks Park, which provides access to the 40- to 60-foot cliffs.
Along the rocky outcroppings, the tree leaves were beginning to change color, and it truly began to feel like fall.
The annual Fall Festival
This is the first year that Laura Guild, executive director of the Grand Ledge Area Chamber of Commerce, is organizing the Fall Festival.
The free, family event draws visitors from across the state, and while Guild said she was largely following last year’s framework, she made one substantial addition to the festival.
“We’re having a quiet zone for our very first time,” Guild said. “It's going to be across the street. That way, if it becomes overwhelming for anyone who maybe has anxiety or children where there's just too many lights or sounds, they just need a place to sort of break away.”
The Grand Ledge Area Chamber of Commerce partnered with the Michigan Autism Association to put the quiet zone together, and Guild said it was important that area be visible.
“It's right there next to the festival, so it's going to be really nice and easy for everybody to see it,” she said. “It’s not going to be hidden away.”
The Fall Festival will also include more than 100 artisans and vendors, live entertainment, a petting zoo and more.
This year’s Fall Festival kicks off at 10 am at Jaycee Park on Saturday, Oct. 3.
