Flint to Shay Lake

History of a Black Resort in the Middle of White Michigan

Shay Lake real estate is regarded as a beautiful but lesser-known market in Michigan for lake homes and lake lots. This characterization comes from LakeHomes.com.

A minor blip on the real estate company’s radar, you won’t find Shay Lake’s zip code listed among the top ten in the state for Most Affordable Zip Codes in the company’s Lake Real Estate Market Report: Fall 2021. And even though “lake real estate continues to be a hot market and even hotter than most other types of homes,” said Lake Homes Realty CEO Glenn S. Phillips, in the report’s CEO’s Market Insights, it is nowhere to be found among the Michigan lakes with the Most Homes Available or Most Land Available. Indeed, just three properties there are listed as available on LakeHomes.com.

Still, Shay Lake’s idyllic setting holds a special place in the hearts and minds of many people. Moreover, amid the assortment of cottages – many from a bygone era, and more than a few vacant or deserted – the lake is attracting a new group of property owners. “The last house that went on the market sold in six hours, at the sales price,” said Henry Harris, Jr., who’s lived at Shay Lake for 15 years and serves as vice president of the Shay Lake Association.

His attraction to the place is straightforward and down-to-earth. “I like water. I like fishing,” said Harris, 73, who first began visiting the lake in 1974. “It used to be very inexpensive to live on. The water draws people here. We wouldn’t be here without the water.”

The Time Was Right

Michigan is shaped figuratively and literally by the vast bodies of freshwater – inland seas, to some – that surround it. Indeed, the state’s name is derived from the Native American word Michigama, meaning great or large lake. Once you move inland, the number of lakes in Michigan ranges from just over 11,000 to nearly 65,000, depending on the criteria used. Of those, more than 5,300 inland lakes between are ten acres and one-hundred acres. Shay Lake is among that group.

Just a dot on the map, tucked away in the southeastern corner of Tuscola County in Michigan’s Thumb region, Shay Lake would go on to punch above its relative diminutive size on the social and cultural register in the latter half of the 20th Century. The time was right. The state’s industrial centers in southeastern Michigan were thriving in the post-World War II era of the 1950s and ‘60s, providing greater opportunities for ordinary, working-class people to buy vacation homes in secluded regions up north. Black families in the industrial cities also benefited from the economic prosperity of the period. However, the opportunity for Black folk to buy cottages around the state’s 11,000-plus lakes was as restricted – by custom or deed – as it was in the segregated neighborhoods down state.

Idlewild was one exception. Located in a rural part of northwestern lower Michigan about 225 miles from Detroit, it was one of the few resorts in the country where Black people could vacation and buy property before legal segregation was outlawed by the 1964 Civil Rights Act. While Idlewild was nearing the end of its heyday and on the decline, Shay Lake emerged to fill the void. For a half-century, beginning in the late 1950s, it was the spot for many Black blue- and white-collar workers (many of whom employed in the booming automotive industry) as well as Black professionals who fled Detroit, Flint and Saginaw from late spring through mid-autumn for a weekend getaway at their modest cottages.

Shay Lake—whose 45 acres of freshwater was filled with so many bluegills, perch, crayfish, clams and tiny shells—was at the center of many Black Baby Boomers' childhoods and upbringing. It had become the new “Black Eden of Michigan.”

Becoming Shay Lake

Portrait of Ishdonquit or Indian Dave

Ishdonquit or Indian Dave

Situated on the outer reaches of the Cass River Watershed, the area that would become known as Shay Lake was inhabited by Native American tribes long before any white settlements were established. The earliest recorded people were Sauk Indians, but mostly Chippewas occupied the area by the time Michigan became a state in 1837. One of last Chippewas to hunt, fish and trap in the old manner in the Tuscola County area was Ishdonquit, or Indian Dave, according to the Michigan Historical Marker dedicated to him. He is reported to have attended the gathering at the Saginaw River where 114 Chippewa chiefs and braves signed the Treaty of Saginaw, which ceded about 6-million acres of land in central eastern Michigan to the United States.

In addition, surveyor notes from 1834 and 1835 show that there were many Indian trails in the area, including one that connected two nearby bodies of water. One would later be named Harmon Lake; the other Shay Lake, located about seven miles southeast of the former.

Twenty years after Michigan entered the Union, Dayton Township was founded in January 1857. Interestingly, the township was named in honor of William L. Dayton, the first Republican vice-presidential nominee who was the running mate of presidential nominee John C. Frémont. Slavery was the main issue in the 1856 presidential election. Democrats were then the pro-slavery party; the new Republican party was anti-slavery and opposed the extension of that vile and barbaric institution into federal territories. Their slogan was ‘Free Soil, Free Speech, Free Men, Fremont.’ Although the ticket was defeated, Dayton would later play a pivotal role in President Lincoln’s administration when the fate of the Union hung in the balance. Lincoln had appointed Dayton Ambassador to France. In France, Dayton was part of the successful lobbying effort during the Civil War to prevent the government of Napoleon III from recognizing the independence of the Confederacy, who had waged war to preserve slavery, or allowing Confederate use of French ports.

Following the establishment of Dayton Township, fifteen freeholders formed its first governing body. The name “freeholder” dates to before the American Revolution and loosely means the only people eligible to hold public office at the time, which were white male owners of debt-free land. Many of the lakes and road names in the township would later carry the names of those individuals, including Lorenzo Hurd (Hurd’s Corner Road), Dennis Harmon (Harmon Lake Road and Lake) and Michael Shay (Shay Lake Road and Lake).

An internet search of genealogy records shows a Michael Daniel Shay born about April 1821 in Canada West, which became known as Ontario in 1867. Shay died Dec. 29, 1894, in Clifford, Michigan, which is about eight miles south of the small lake that would bear his name.

Shay Lake is located within section 13 & 14, NE quadrant

Someplace Special

Sometime in 1957, Clarence Campbell, Sr., and his wife, Rose, loaded up their three young children in the family’s 1956 pink Buick to go for a ride.

“We often took just rides in the country for entertainment back in those days. But this ride was different, as it seemed we were going someplace special,” said the father’s oldest son, Clarence, Jr., or Chuck, as he’s known in the family. He was just 7 or 8 years old at the time. “Of course, as usual, we got lost, mostly because the directions on this business card Dad had obtained from Lafayette (a family friend) weren’t clear.”

Clarence Sr., born in April 1921, was a decorated combat veteran of World War II who had served with the all-Black 92nd Infantry Division in Italy’s North Apennines and Po Valley regions. After the war, he returned to his factory job at AC Spark Plug in Flint while Rose worked as an elevator operator for Citizens Bank. The couple, who each grew up in Flint and recalled hearing stories about the summer homes of some of their white high school classmates, had longed for a retreat of their own up north. Then, during a golf outing with friends, Clarence Campbell learned about the availability of some waterfront property on a small lake north of Lapeer in the Thumb area.

“Eventually as we rounded this circular road, I could see we were at a lake,” said Chuck, 72. “We stopped at what looked like some type of meeting hall. It was the Clubhouse and upstairs was where Fred Mathews and his family lived. Except for a few lots that had been sold to other individuals – there were just a few cottages on the lake at that time, Mr. Mathews owned property surrounding the lake.”

According to property records on file with the Tuscola County Register of Deeds, a large parcel of land northeast of the lake and south of Shay Lake Road, platted October 1949, was owned by Mathews and his wife, Judy; John J. and Gladys Kane; and the Peoples State Bank of Caro. The plat contained 272 lots. A second parcel platted April 1953, south of Shay Lake Road, ran along Sucker Creek Drain and continued along the lake’s northeast shoreline, also was owned by Mathews, et. al. The two plats, comprising 328 lots in all, were known as Shay Lake Subdivision No. 1 and No. 2, respectively. Meanwhile, the north, west and south sides of the lake were still largely wilderness.

By the summer of 1958, the Campbells had scraped and saved up enough money to secure a sliver of waterfront-property in subdivision number two. There, they began construction on a mid-century modern, flat-roof cottage with a wraparound deck on Lot 334, down a gentle slope near the Clubhouse.

Shay Lake with current roadways

“I remember the folks spent a lot of time clearing the lot before they could build,” said Gail Williams, their oldest child. “It was pretty crude and rustic. There were just a few little, small cottages. Maybe one or two bedrooms. Daddy went in 50-50 with Mr. (Quimby) Rosemond on the land and later bought out Mr. Rosemond. He bought another place at the lake.”

Clarence – born 100 years to the month after the lake’s namesake – and Rose, along with fellow Flint families Rosemond and Brackins, whose cottage was just up the road on Lot 324, were among the original “settlers” who transformed the sleepy, largely undeveloped area into a lively, recreational retreat for Black families.

Endless Sunny Afternoon; Written and Performed by Lobo Loco

Putting Shay Lake on the Map

A May 23, 1930, ad in the Tuscola County Advertiser.

How Shay Lake became a magnet for urban Black families seeking resort property in such a secluded, rural locale is not clear. Dayton Township’s Black population is today still less than 2 percent. What is known is that Shay Lake was a site of fishing, boating, and picnicking by the time of the First World War, according to reports in the Tuscola County Advertiser.

People from the Flint and Detroit areas also frequented the area to visit friends and relatives. It continued to be “an attraction for many visitors who were out for diversions from home duties on Sunday. Ellington and Kingston [a small town about six miles east] crossed bats for the ball game in the afternoon,” the newspaper reported July 15, 1927.

That baseball game – and the others that would follow – was likely played on a field encircled today by a dirt road on the lake’s east side, part of an area known then as Shay Lake Park. Published in the May 23, 1930, edition of the Tuscola County Advertiser was an ad announcing the “Grand Opening of Shay Lake Park on Decoration Day, May 30.” The amusements included “Horseshoe Courts, Boating, Fishing, Swimming, Swings, Teeter-Totter, Merry-Go-Rounds, Maypole, etc.” The day’s festivities also included a ball game between the nearby community of Mayville and the “Buick Stars Colored Team.”

In 1923-24, Buick sponsored a team in Southern California called the Buick All-Stars that “boasted of ‘colored stars’ from the Negro Leagues,” according to Baseball Team Names: A Worldwide Dictionary 1869-2011. It is unknown whether the same team visited Shay Lake or if any players from Flint were on the roster for that May 30, 1930, game. (Other “colored” ball teams, from Saginaw and elsewhere, barnstormed across the Thumb Region to play games against white local teams during the period.)

However, it is worth noting that Buick’s world headquarters as well as the bulk of its manufacturing operations in 1930 were based in Flint. Moreover, the sprawling Buick Motor Division complex bordered the St. John Street neighborhood where thousands of Black people who had moved north in the early days of the Great Migration had settled. Thus, it is possible the early visits by the Buick Stars and other barnstorming teams through the region helped to put Shay Lake on the map as an imagined recreational destination for the Black men and their fans who traveled there. Then, as in nowadays, ideas and information often traveled by word-of-mouth.

But another generation would pass, and a second world war fought and won in the interim, before that dream would come to fruition for Blacks seeking resort property at Shay Lake. Meanwhile, the Shay Stone Ballroom (aka Shaystone Gardens) – a building that would later be known as “the Clubhouse” – at Shay Lake Park would through the intervening years host weddings and dance parties on the weekends, with music provided by live orchestras. By the mid-1940s, the same newspaper advertisements also included “cottages for rent”.

Shay Lake Park opened under new management for the season in May 1946 – the same year Fred G. Mathews, and wife Judy, moved to Kingston after purchasing Shay Lake Park. The Mathews had three daughters: Nancy, Sandra and Arlene, the youngest.

Gail Williams, 74, recalls playing with Arlene and her sisters, and being shown around the lake.

“The other side of the lake was undeveloped, just a few pathways,” said Gail Williams. She continued: “The Mathews weren’t well off. They didn’t have much. Mr. Mathews had like a sportsman club.”

However, she thinks Mathews may have “sunk money into the lake without getting the return. It was mostly poor whites in the area (at the time), but he wasn’t making any money. Mr. Mathews decided to start selling to Black folks.”

Mary Drier, a reporter for the Tuscola County Advertiser from the mid-1980s to 2015, said in a 2021 interview that “the land wasn’t considered very desirable. The area around the lake was quite swampy and dirt had to be brought in to make it suitable for building.”

Drier speculated that because Shay Lake was remote, isolated, and relatively unoccupied, an influx of Black people from the cities would not be a cause for alarm for some whites.

Still, the transition to a Black enclave was fraught with the same racial baggage of the era. Even as Blacks were beginning to stake claims on lake property, the Tuscola County Advertiser on March 13, 1958, published a brief article with the headline “Minstrel Shows Are At Fairgrove.”

To raise fund for the summer recreation program for children, members of the Fairgrove Businessmen’s Association are presenting a minstrel show on both Thursday and Friday nights, March 20 and 21. Place of the shows is the Fairgrove high school.

“The summer program was started two years ago and proved popular and successful,” officials said this week, “and it is toward the continuation of this and other worthy community projects for which funds are being used.”

Fairgrove is just 23 miles northwest of Shay Lake. Moreover, once advertising for lake property began in earnest, including the use of roadside placards, residents from nearby Cat Lake reportedly would tear down the signage, to prevent property-seekers and visitors from finding the destination.

Gail Williams also recalled how her father endured racial epithets while the family cottage was under construction. “Some white guys would get in the boat and drive back and forth in front of the cottage, threatening to destroy the place and calling him ‘nigger’ and stuff like that.”

Norman Brackins, a son of one of the one original Black families, recalled an incident when his parents first traveled to Shay Lake in 1955. “As we were driving over on the old side of the lake (east of the Clubhouse), a lady came out. She had an accent. More of a foreign accent, it seemed, but it could have been southern. As we were going by, she said, ‘You niggers go home. We don’t want you here.’ My father told us not to worry about it. That was the only incident I remember.”

Gail Williams added white neighbors next door provided her father with water for time before he was able to install a well on the property. And a different neighbor would allow Clarence Campbell to bunk at their place while he was building the family cottage.

By 1959, the two-bedroom cottage with its massive cinderblock fireplace and wraparound deck was finished.

Staking a Claim

Beginning in August 1958 and continuing through December 1962, land on the other side of the lake – the north and west sides – was platted and named Shay Lake Heights Subdivision, Nos. 1-6. Truckloads of dirt were brought in to prepare the land for future development.

Chuck Campbell remembers seeing those small mountains of dirt when the family spent weekends at their new cottage. He and a playmate named Philip Thompson would sometimes climb and play on those hills of fresh dirt in Shay Lake Heights. The parcels, which contained several hundred lots, came under the control of Select Land Development Company, whose co-partners were William Fisher, Edmund Wozniak and Arden Thompson. Frank and Mary Chantney, husband and wife, also were listed as proprietors of the land.

But it was Thompson, whose oldest son was named Philip, who came to be most closely associated with the development and marketing of Shay Lake Heights Subdivision. He had originally owned a place on the lake’s east side a few doors north of the Campbells’ new cottage. Thompson would later build a contemporary split-level house on Shay Lake Road at Sucker Creek Drain from the proceeds of the many property sales that would follow. And in the subsequent years, there would be a large sign in front of his split-level ranch that read “Select Land Development Company.”

According to his obituary, Thompson, who died December 30, 1993, started Select Land Development Company in 1956 and “is the founder of the Shay Lake Heights resort area and is the person responsible for most of the development of Shay Lake.” He was born in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1917 and later worked four years as a “special investigator” for Ford Motor Company after World War II.

It was while working for Ford that Thompson learned that there were few, if any, places where Black people could buy resort property, except for Idlewild, said Bert Slater, who has lived at Shay Lake for two decades.

“The white guy supposedly befriended a Black woman who also worked at the plant,” said Slater, a real estate agent and retired corporate manager from Southfield. Bob Adams, who moved to the lake in 2009 after retiring from Chrysler, said he “heard the story that a lot of other people heard” about the origins of the lake’s draw for Black people. Adams had been visiting Shay Lake since he was 9 years old – “I remember when there were just eight or nine houses here.” – and eventually bought property in 1978.

Shay Lake newspaper ad

A newspaper ad in the Michigan Chronicle (Black newspaper published in Detroit) from the early 1960s.

“This was half the distance compared to going to Idlewild,” Adams said. “People really didn’t want to go that far. My aunt had a place at Idlewild. So, it gave me a perspective on the two places.”

By early 1960s, Select Land Development Company was advertising lots and cottages for sale at “SHAY LAKE: MICHIGAN’S MOST SUCCESSFUL SUMMER RESORT!” in the Michigan Chronicle, a weekly Black newspaper based in Detroit that was founded in 1936.

A review of property transactions suggests many of the properties were sold and acquired via land contract, which is a contract between a buyer and private seller for real property. Land contracts are often used when conventional mortgages are unavailable or private financing is more convenient. The buyer is an owner, but they only get “equitable title,” which is the right to obtain full ownership of property. That is different from legal title, which is actual ownership of property. The buyer will not get legal title until the total purchase price is paid.

Nonetheless, vacant lots and cottages were sold, and the lake's popularity took off.

Meanwhile, Fred Gifford Mathews died in March 1963 after one year of illness. He had retired three years earlier to raise Hackney ponies, according to his obituary. A memorial headstone was later erected at Shay Lake on a knoll across the way from the Clubhouse – an area formerly known as Shay Lake Park – where Gifford Road and Gilford Drive converge.

Up at the Lake

Norman Brackins remembers fondly the early days of days of being up at the lake. He and his four siblings (two brothers and two sisters) spent countless hours exploring the lake and hanging out with friends whose parents also had cottages there.

“It was such a joy,” he said. “We would be at each other’s cottages way into the night. The nights here would be really dark because there weren’t any streetlights. But we didn’t worry about that at all. And then there was the Clubhouse.”

Gail Williams recalled that Judy Mathews sold “the Clubhouse and some property” to Emmitt Jenkins of Flint. Jenkins and his wife, Rose, had already purchased property on Sucker Creek along the canal in 1960. “He was (allegedly) a big numbers man and drove a big Lincoln. His wife had a beauty shop on the northside (in Flint),” said Williams, who continued: “A group performed there called ‘The Flints.’ I also remember Mary Wells,” one of the early stars of Motown Records.

Brackins remembers Saginaw native Stevie Wonder performing at the Clubhouse around the time his hit single “Fingertips” was released in 1962. “A lot of groups from Detroit played here,” he said. “We used to sneak in the backdoor and watch the entertainers.”

Flint saxophonist Sherwood Pea, who played with the Motown house band and toured with jazz legends Sonny Stitt and the Court Basie Orchestra. The Temptations and Diana Ross are also rumored to have passed through Shay Lake in those early days before hitting it big. “I do remember Brook Benton playing (at the Clubhouse) one Sunday as we were leaving,” Chuck Campbell added. Benton was a popular singer in the late 1950s and early 1960s who later recorded “Rainy Night in Georgia.”

However, Shay Lake never achieved the level of fame as a Black entertainment venue that Idlewild enjoyed during its heyday. Although musicians, mostly from the Detroit area, still played there occasionally, by the early to mid-1970s the lake had become better known as a more family-oriented recreation spot. Boating, swimming, waterskiing, dirt bikes, teenage parties and family gatherings assumed center stage as the chief form of weekend fun and entertainment.

“Man, we were boating and fishing and having a good time. We just couldn’t wait to get there. It gave us insight into places other than Flint,” said Brackins, who still has a cottage at Shay Lake. “There was a guy our age – his name was Robert Porter from Saginaw – he had an old green Chevy called ‘The Shop Around’ (named after a Motown hit by The Miracles). It was some great days.”

By the early 1970s, the first wave of the Black Baby Boomers that had been drafted, some of whom shipped off to war in Vietnam or for duty in other parts of Southeast Asia, had returned to stateside and were ready to unwind. Meanwhile, more property owners began docking speedboats at their lakefront cottages in place of the rowboats of the earlier years.

Darryl Buchanan, 66, called Shay Lake the setting for his “coming-of-age” story. “It was a care-free time. For me, it was like the ‘Wonder Years’,” said Buchanan, referencing the popular ABC series that was rebooted in 2021 with a Black family in the title role. “A magical place for me,” said Buchanan.

His only worry at the lake, he said, were the “drop-offs,” a transition area where the lake’s shallow bottom suddenly drops into the deeper water.

A Detroit native, Buchanan grew up near the epicenter of the ’67 riot and witnessed it unfold. But his father and stepmother owned a waterfront cottage from 1967-75 located on the point, a soft peninsula on the lake’s westside – Shay Lakes Heights, the so-called new side. It provided an escape from the city and the neighborhood, he said. “I can remember standing in the front room and seeing the lake on all three sides. It was pretty awesome.” He also remembers “meeting the most beautiful girl I can ever remember seeing at Shay Lake. She was visiting a neighbor that had a cottage.”

Once at the lake, Buchanan said, “I hung out with Jesse Stephens and his crew. Jesse was ‘Mr. Shay Lake’ to me. He was just ‘the man’.”

Stephens, whose parents owned and operated Shay Lake Grocery, a small general store and gas station, was also well-known for his waterskiing exploits. “Mr. Shay Lake,” who hailed from Highland Park, often joined with Derrick Williamson, another outstanding waterskier, and his family in showing off their dazzling slalom work on the lake. Williamson’s father, a graduate of Howard University Medical School, was a successful physician in Detroit; his mother, a one-time civil servant at the Pentagon, worked extensively with Dr. Charles H. Wright and the original African American Museum in Detroit. The Williamson’s owned a blue-and-white, 140 hp inboard/outboard, flat-bottomed boat, and their ranch-style, lakefront cottage was among the finest at Shay Lake.

“We used to ski all-day long,” said Dr. Derrick Williamson, whose family started going to the lake in the late 1950s, first as a place where his grandfather and father would hunt. “There were a lot of skiers – the Washingtons, the Brackins, the Williams. My brother Ronald and I used to trick ski.”

Learning how to waterski is how Carole Williams, Clarence Campbell’s third daughter, began to connect with other teenagers at the lake. From a social standpoint, things began to change when her older brother, Chuck, came back from the Army in 1972.

“Me learning how to ski got people on the new side to say: ‘Hey, there are people over there (on the east side) our age,” said Carole Williams, 63. “The first time I slalomed, Addison and Marnell (two Detroit teenagers her age) stopped by to say, ‘great job’. It took me forever to get up and, of course, daddy drove the boat crazy.” The 17-foot aluminum Duratech Neptune was powered by a 115-hp Mercury and considered one of the fastest boats on the lake.

Being a Flint native, connecting with the Detroit crowd also brought new experiences. “During that time, we found out they were doing ‘progressives’,” she said. “The Detroit people were doing these parties, going house to house. I got to go, which was a big deal. So, the time from about (age) 13 to 17 (the early to mid-1970s), that was a pretty-cool time. We got (motor) bikes, too.”

Dr. Williamson recalled how widespread motorcycles were among his teenage friends and young adults. “It started with those little mini-bikes. I was one of the first to get a mini bike. From there, it was just a progression to bigger motorcycles to Honda 50 and 70 (CCs) to Kawasaki 100s. My sister had a Suzuki 125.”

And the seemingly ubiquitous sound of a motorcycle circling the dirt roads on a Friday afternoon or early evening was one of the key indicators of how many families might be up at the lake for the weekend, said Dr. Williamson, who has three siblings. “Another one was who dropped by your place on Friday. Ricky Lawson lived across the road from us and we would hang out. Ricky went on to become a big-time drummer, playing for Michael Jackson, George Duke and others.”

Lawson, a Detroit native, was a Grammy-winning musician who co-founded the jazz-fusion group the Yellowjackets. He also played with Phil Collins, Whitney Houston, Stevie Wonder, Al Jarreau, George Benson, Bette Midler, Lionel Richie, The Brothers Johnson, Quincy Jones and many more. Lawson, who died unexpectedly from a brain hemorrhage in December 2013, was affectionately known throughout the music industry as the “Drummer to the Stars”, according to DRUMMERWORLD.

A third indicator of the weekend's potential for social activity was the number of porch lights illuminated across the lake on a Friday night, Dr. Williamson said. “The more lights you saw, the more likely it was going to be happening that weekend,” he said.

Carole Williams agreed. She recalled how the simple act of installing a light in front of their lake-facing cottage was a big deal for the family. “Seeing the front porch lights lit up across the lake at night would give us an idea of how many people were at the lake for the weekend. So, we were big-time now.”

Looking back, she added, holiday weekends were extra. “Daddy would buy extra stuff, extra pop, hot dogs buns, one can of cinnamon rolls. We’d each get one cinnamon roll. He would try to make it extra special for us. Periodically, we would go into Kingston for ice cream.”

However, the Clubhouse did not factor into her Wonder Years at the lake. “The Clubhouse was rickety, old and scary at that point,” she said.

By the end of the 1970s and into the early ‘80s, the social climate at Shay Lake had cooled. In some cases, family situations changed, as the children and teens moved into adulthood and went away to college. In others, couples divorced, and the property sold. There were also economic jolts of the 1979 oil crisis, fueled by the Iranian revolution, and the deep recession of 1980-83.

“Most of my friends left the state in the early ‘80s, as GM and the auto industry was slumping,” said Carole Williams. “My age group that would have repopulated the lake started pulling out for places like Texas.”

The economy rebounded in the mid-1980s, and Shay Lake experienced something of a second act – a modest revival (at least compared to the go-go 1970s) that would last another decade or so. However, much of the second-generation of the original owners had moved onto other recreational and vacation venues that were either out of reach or unavailable to their parents’ generation, such as vacationing in exotic locales like Jamaica. The transition was in full motion by the end of the 1990s and into the early 2000s, as indicated by the various property transactions on the record at the Tuscola County Register of Deeds.

Further declines and changes in the U.S. auto industry, and the broader economy, throughout the period were factors, too, Buchanan said. “Not having the same level of disposable income, that obviously impacted what happened at Shay Lake, as it did at other resort communities in Michigan,” he said.

Clarence and Rose Campbell sold their property finally in November 2002 after 44 years. Nearly half-century of the ground heaving from the annual freeze-and-thaw cycles had taken its toll on the lakefront structure that rested on a foundation too shallow for the terrain.

“One day around 2002, Pops called me to say he sold the cottage,” Chuck said. “It was time, she had served us well.” The Campbells’ cottage was demolished soon after Rick and Cindy Kinel bought the property.

Clarence died six years later in 2008 and Rose in 2012.

Today, Shay Lake is more of a residential community of year-around residents instead of the weekend retreat of its heyday. In that regard, it appears to have come full circle, as the subdivisions platted from 1949 through 1962 seemed to envision, although there are still plenty of undeveloped lots. Shay Lake Grocery closed years ago, and the property is now a private residence tucked behind stockade fencing.

The resident population also skews toward retirement age and the racial composition of the property owners has shifted from being overwhelmingly, if not 100 percent, Black to somewhere between 60 percent and 70 percent white, said Henry Harris, Jr., the lone Black member of the six-member association board.

“A lot of property has gone up for tax sales,” said Harris, who retired from the Detroit Police Department after 35 years as a sworn officer. “We’re seeing more and more people that we do not know.”

The association has about 85 members who pay $150 annually to maintain the roads primarily, Harris said. The public lake is monitored by the Michigan Department of Natural Resources but to get on the water requires access through someone’s private land. Dues-paying members receive a key to the boat-ramp area, which has been cordoned off and gated years ago to control lake access. The area was being frequented by non-residents and had become somewhat rowdy, Harris said.

When traveling along the dirt roads that ring the lake, “private property” and “no trespassing” signs are a common sight as well as fenced-in, gated lots. There are even signs along the access roads to alert visitors that they have entered a private area.

To be sure, it is a different vibe from the days of yore when “we would roam from yard to yard,” said Carole Williams.

But Harris said the signage is a necessary protective measure after being told by township officials and law enforcement “that everything around the lake is private. Asking the township for anything, like maintaining the roads, we were told that the land is private. At that point, the ‘we’ becomes private. We have a neighborhood watch group. We patrol and ride through the neighborhood and report back.”

Some lake residents pointed fingers to changes like Cyb’s Hideaway Lounge, a strip club that operated for about 10 years on Shay Lake Road, a county road, at a location formerly known as Sweetie’s Place, as a turning point. Sweetie’s Place was once billed as the “new Clubhouse” when it was built in the mid-1970s. However, it was completed as the lake’s popularity was beginning to wane slowly and the property was eventually bought by Frederick Cyb in August 1991. After failing to make it as a regular bar, Cyb converted it into a “go-go bar” about two years later.

“That turned this thing around. I started making money,” said Cyb, quoted in a September 1993 article in the Tuscola Advertiser. He added that attendance often exceeded 160 people “with more waiting outside to get in.” Cyb died in April 2002. The property is no longer a bar or entertainment venue.

In 2014, a “KKK (Ku Klux Klan) picnic” sign was posted on a vacant lot in the Shay Lake Heights Subdivision at Shay Lake Road and Arden Park Drive.

“When the sign was found, people tried to pass it off that it was private property,” said Harris, who told the Tuscola County prosecutor that it was ethnic intimidation. “Nothing ever happened to the man (considered to be responsible).”

About three dozen residents attended a neighborhood watch meeting held at the Clubhouse; everybody was against and angered by the racist incident, he said. There haven’t been any such incidents since.

Overall, Shay Lake is “quiet, laid back,” said Bob Adams. “It’s a neighborly environment.”

Other residents agreed, calling the place idyllic and serene. And it is hard to disagree when visiting the lake on a gorgeous Michigan autumn day.

“The lake is a beautiful place. Clear water,” Slater said.

Harris added: “We test the water at least twice a year. It is some of the purest water in the state.”

Although the lake is placid most days, holidays can still be fairly crowded, residents say, with pontoon boats cruising and personal watercraft zipping about, sometimes with water tubes in tow. Ice fishing and snowmobiling are common during the winter months.

Shay Lake has experienced something of a third act as a spot for weekend getaways.

Adams, along with co-organizers Harris and Bert Slater, have hosted the Shay Lake Fishing Derby for 14 years for children from the Flint, Detroit and Saginaw areas. Some local children have participated, too. (The COVID-19 pandemic prevented the group from holding the event 2020 and 2021.)

“We’ve had up to 150 kids,” said Adams.

Slater also operates Camp A.R.T.I.S. at the Clubhouse, which hosts youth groups from grades 5-12 for a weekend of camping, fishing, and watersports. It has drawn youth from about a 70-mile radius. “We also share some of the history of the lake,” he said. “We would work with church groups, family groups and youth organizations. We’re working to add more programming.”

In addition, the Clubhouse is available for overnight rentals and advertised on the vacation rental sites, such as Vrbo and Airbnb. Several lakefront cottages also have listings on the rental sites. The customer reviews appear to be largely favorable.

Both Harris and Adams said there is growing interest in the area, and Slater has handled some estate sales for lake properties.

“People are trying to move here,” said Adams. “I’ve run into a number of Black people (whose parents owned property there) who are trying to move back.”

However, the era of Shay Lake as an exclusively Black enclave in rural Tuscola County has ended. It remains to be seen whether a new and younger generation of urban Black families will seek refuge and invest in the area their foreparents pioneered. A spot that provided the kind of lived experiences one might read about or see on television, such as a boy, 12, finding a stone arrowhead artifact that had been left behind by a Native American inhabitant long ago; digging in the sand at the water’s edge only to be amazed by the unearthing of a recently hatched baby turtle; or witnessing the natural process of a small frog being devoured slowly by a snake that had slithered up beside it on a partially submerged log in front of the family’s cottage. Time will tell.

Of greater certainty is the lake itself. Shay Lake will live on, regardless.

Ishdonquit or Indian Dave

Shay Lake is located within section 13 & 14, NE quadrant

A May 23, 1930, ad in the Tuscola County Advertiser.

A newspaper ad in the Michigan Chronicle (Black newspaper published in Detroit) from the early 1960s.

Shay Lake with current roadways