CascAda History #2 - Whitney Tavern Stand Traditional Cache

This cache has been archived.

bretina: This one is difficult to get to/find in Winter and it's been there a while. Think it's run it's course.

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Hidden : 7/4/2013
Difficulty:
1.5 out of 5
Terrain:
1.5 out of 5

Size: Size: micro (micro)

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Geocache Description:


CascAda History #2 - Whitney Tavern Stand
The Cascade & Ada Township History Series


Be sure to travel south from the cache location on Whitneyville Road (about 1/10th of a mile) to see the cache’s namesake.

The Whitney Tavern Stand served as an inn and local gathering place in Cascade Township, Michigan for fifty years after its construction in the 1853. In its first few years it served as a stop for stagecoaches.

Despite alterations since its conversion to a private home in the early twentieth century, the hotel retains much of the characteristic appearance of a southern Michigan stagecoach inn dating from the mid-nineteenth century.

Settlement in Cascade Township began in 1836 but proceeded slowly for the first few years. Development beginning in 1838 of a state road between Battle Creek and Grand Rapids that passed through the township along what are now Whitneyville Avenue and Cascade Road served as a major impetus to settlement. The Battle Creek-Grand Rapids road was one of many routes in southern Michigan laid out and built at the direction of the legislature of the newly established state of Michigan in the late 1830s and early 1840s. It followed what seems today a not very direct route between the two places, passing through the early settlement of Gull Prairie – what is now Richland – well west and only a bit north of Battle Creek, before turning directly north through Prairieville, Middleville, Whitneyville, and Cascade to Grand Rapids.

The Whitneys were among the early settlers in Cascade Township. The families of Zerah Whitney (1784-1873), a Connecticut native, and his sons Ezra (1815–99) and Peter arrived in the 1841-42 period and took up land at the site of what soon became known as Whitneyville. The hamlet acquired the township's first post office in 1849 and eventually contained a sawmill, grist mill, store, blacksmith shop, church, and a few scattered houses. But the significance of Whitneyville declined after 1888 when the Grand Rapids, Lansing and Detroit Railroad, the only railroad line built through the area, established its station a mile away at McCords.

Ezra Whitney built a small log hotel in 1842 on a site across the road and a short distance to the south from the present house. He replaced this original hotel with the present frame Whitney Tavern Stand – so identified in an 1870 history – in 1852 or 53. The new tavern and hostelry as built was an L-shaped building with a two-story portico across the front, a ballroom occupying the second story of the entire street-facing front section, and a large wing, containing the kitchen and presumably lodging quarters, extending to the rear from the hotel's north end. The hotel served travelers’ needs as a stagecoach stop and inn providing meals and overnight accommodations and also served as a local watering hole and, with its second-story ballroom, presumably social and cultural center as well. Information about specific events held in the Whitney's ballroom is lacking, but typically these country inn ballrooms hosted a broad range of functions, from dances and entertainments to religious services, church socials, and political meetings.

Whitney was not to enjoy his prosperity for long. In 1855 a plank road turnpike that provided a far more direct connection between Kalamazoo and Grand Rapids than the older stagecoach routes through Richland and Whitneyville was completed. The plank road, permitting a six-hour trip from Kalamazoo to Grand Rapids as opposed to the old two-day time frame, took over the traffic between Kalamazoo and Grand Rapids that formerly passed through Whitneyville. It may also have absorbed much of the traffic between Battle Creek and Grand Rapids as well, since passengers could ride the Michigan Central Railroad between Battle Creek and Kalamazoo and then ride the stage up to Grand Rapids in far less time – and far greater comfort – than by taking the stage on the old state road. Whitney, who must have seen the handwriting on the wall, built a new hotel at Bradley on the Kalamazoo-Grand Rapids plank road when the road opened and sold his Whitneyville hotel.

Nevertheless stagecoaches continued to run through Whitneyville on the Battle Creek-to-Grand Rapids route via Hastings until around 1870 when the Grand River Valley Railroad, from Jackson to Grand Rapids through Hastings, was completed. In addition, the state business gazetteers indicate that stage service, presumably operating from the hotel, connected Whitneyville with Caledonia Station (now Caledonia) on the Grand River Valley line during much of the 1880s – perhaps from the time the Valley line was completed until 1888 when the much closer GR, L & D line and its McCords depot opened.

Additional Hints (Decrypt)

N jryy thneqrq zntargvp xrl ubyqre

Decryption Key

A|B|C|D|E|F|G|H|I|J|K|L|M
-------------------------
N|O|P|Q|R|S|T|U|V|W|X|Y|Z

(letter above equals below, and vice versa)


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