Berrien County history

With the exception of a few traders, Berrien remained unsettled until Squire Isaac Thompson, the county's first settler, arrived at Niles in 1823.

Built in 1839, the stately little Greek Revival temple was designed by Gilbert Avery, a local master builder.

Named after John Macpherson Berrien, a Savannah lawyer who later served as United States Attorney General under President Andrew Jackson, Berrien County was incorporated in 1856 as Georgia’s 116th county.

Louis D. Wallace, one of thirteen children, was born November 25, 1864 in Chicago, and came to southwestern Michigan at the age of two when his father, John, opened the Wallace Lumber Yard in St Joseph.2

Montgomery Ward moved to Niles as a young boy and lived in Berrien until 1865 when he moved to Chicago and founded the mail order department store chain that still bears his name.

In 1873 Stanley Morton, one of Benton Harbor's earliest residents, ran his small ship, the Lake Breeze, to Chicago and transported tourists to southwestern Michigan.

The Town of Alapaha was incorporated in 1881 on the site of a Seminole village with the same name.

Wallace went to work for Drake's boat livery in 1885 and the two became friends.

In 1891, Drake and his partner Louis D. Wallace established the Silver Beach Amusement and Realty Company with the intention of giving tourists more to do in St Joseph.

The county seat of Berrien County is Nashville, which was incorporated in 1892 and serves as the business center of the county.

In 1894 the county moved its governmental seat to St Joseph and the courthouse passed into private hands and became a community social center, a militia hall, and finally for nearly half a century, a house of worship for the Berrien Springs Seventh-Day Adventist Church.

In mid-October 1898, Herring brought his heavier than air flying machine to Silver Beach, started the motor, and held on.

President William McKinley dedicated the cannon memorial on October 17, 1899*, which still stands in Dewey Cannon Park as a proud reminder of the campaign labeled by locals as "Three Oaks Against the World."

The 'PawPaw' Lake Post Office was a "Summer Only" post office established on August 14, 1901, with William A. Baker as its first postmaster.

Augustus Moore Herring, a St Joseph resident, manned and flew a primitive airplane over the sand; in a historic flight that predated the famous 1903 Wright Brothers flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, by nearly five years.

The Town of Enigma was incorporated in 1906 and the official history of the towns name is an “enigma.” Georgia writer Harry Crews used Enigma as the setting for his first novel, The Gospel Singer.

The post office was discontinued on September 30, 1907.

The post office was discontinued on September 30, 1907. It was reestablished as the Lake Point Post Office, also a "Summer Only" post office, on July 26, 1909; with Alice M. Baker as its first postmaster.

In 1911 Fred and Louis Upton moved to St Joseph, obtained a patent for an electric clothes washer, and began the Upton Machine Company.

Silver Beach became the scene of another famous airplane flight in 1913 when Logan A. "Jack" Vilas flew his double-wing open-cockpit airboat from the St Joseph beach to Chicago, Illinois.

Beginning in 1914 the Saturday Evening Post began publication of a series of articles that were to become Lardner's best-known works.

The first launch was called the "Wolverine" after Michigan's state animal; The second was the "Buckeye" the third the "Tourist" and the fourth, launched in 1915 and powered by gasoline, was a 65 footer named the "Milton D." after Drake's son.

The post office was again discontinued, this time on May 31, 1919.

Utilizing several separate one- or two-person capacity cars, the “Figure 8” coaster, as it was known to be called, became a staple of the amusement park until it was torn down in 1923 and replaced by the Velvet rollercoaster.

The Alapaha Colored School (1924)

The last improvement, and my personal favorite, was the building of the Shadowland Ballroom in May of 1927.

Lardner died in 1933 and his achievements were favorably compared to those of Mark Twain.

2 Benton Harbor News Palladium, July 6, 1945. [ Back ]

The jail was used until 1965, when a new jail was built, and the building was abandoned.

The fort was surrendered to the British about 1761, captured by Chief Pontiac in 1763, taken by the Spaniards in 1781, and by the United States after the Revolutionary War. Thus it became known as “the Land of Four Flags,” which is the theme of the new Berrien County Flag adopted in July, 1967.

With a costly estimation for repairs and improvements needed for the park to open in 1972, the owners of Silver Beach were left with no other choice and the park was closed permanently.

3 Interview with Roberta Drake Terrill, February 1976. [ Back ]

Unfortunately, in 1989, lightning struck the building and fire severely damaged the its northwest corner.

In 2010, the Silver Beach Center publically opened.