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Saugatuck Pump House / Saugatuck Pump House

Saugatuck Pump House / Saugatuck Pump House is a Michigan historical marker in Saugatuck, Allegan County, dedicated 2016.

735 Park Street, Saugatuck

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The village of Saugatuck built this structure in 1904 to house the community’s first water pumps. The building’s construction cost about $720. The pumps were part of a water system designed by John W. Alvord, an engineer from Chicago. The two gas-powered pumps brought water from seven wells up to a 100,000-gallon reservoir, located at the top of Lone Pine Dune, just north of Mt. Baldhead. Gravity fed the water through pipes under the Kalamazoo River to Saugatuck’s buildings and fire hydrants. In 1912 the Pump House was doubled in size to make room for the village’s first electric power station. By the 1930s, the pumps and power station could no longer keep up with demand, and the village built new facilities elsewhere. The building was vacant until 1972 when it was converted into a summer cottage that Dr. William Shorey and his family rented. In 1992 the Saugatuck-Douglas Historical Society began using it as a museum. The Pump House was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 2015.

TodayHistorical map

Slide toward Today to fade the historical sheet and see the modern map underneath.

David Rumsey Map Collection, Stanford Libraries

Historical maps covering this location

1874 · Colton's Michigan (1874) (Barry Lawrence Ruderman Map Collection, Stanford Libraries)
1897 · Southern Michigan. (David Rumsey Map Collection, Stanford Libraries)
1907 · Map of the original swamp areas of the lower peninsula of Michigan. : 1907. Compiled from… (University of Michigan Library)
1911 · Map of the surface formations of the Southern Peninsula of Michigan (Digital Commonwealth, Boston Public Library)
[Road map of southwestern Michigan, Grand Haven and Grand Rapids to Benton Harbor and… (University of Chicago Library, Mapping Chicagoland · CC BY-NC 4.0, used by permission)

Southern Michigan, 1897, covering the location of Saugatuck Pump House / Saugatuck Pump House, with a pin at the marker's coordinates — Southern Michigan, 1897, covering this location. David Rumsey Map Collection, Stanford Libraries. The pin is ours, placed from the marker's coordinates.

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Marker data: Michigan History Center
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On the National Register nearby

Saugatuck Pump House40 ft

Places within about 300 feet of this marker that are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. A nearby listing is not always the marker's own subject.