CITY OF WALLED LAKE

During the first 100 years of its existence, the village of Walled Lake was unique. It was a classic example of rural American communities. Any­one who has grown up in a small town will recognize its chief character­istics: the town pump, the oil-burning street lamps, the town doctor, the lake from which the village takes its name, and those "main-travelled roads" of midwest America, running in one direction to the big city, in the other to the rural farmlands that formed the backbone of Nineteenth century America. 

Did Walled Lake take its name from a stone wall built by Indians across the eastern half of the lake? Or was that stone formation the result of glacial activity centuries before? Legends have persisted for years, but the glacial explanation is accepted by most authorities today. Whatever its origin, the "wall" has served local history buffs as a discussion topic for years.

In July of 1820, when James Monroe was President, Congress authorized the sale of lands in the Michigan territory at $1.25 an acre. This gave a tremendous boost to land sales. No more would settlers have to work for years hoping to gain title to their land. By paying cash, the men were relieved of that burden and could rest easy knowing their families could not easily be dispossessed.

Walled Lake, like the rest of Oakland County, was settled and populated by enterprising people. There were no famous names coming down the old Indian Trail from Detroit-just those seeking promise of a better life. The first was a young man named Walter Hewitt from New York. It was June of 1825 when he worked his way to the north edge of the lake where he built a log cabin before returning to Farmington for his family.

In 1826, Bela Armstrong settled on the shores of Walled Lake. Cornelius Austin, like Armstrong a veteran of the War of 1812, settled with his family a few years later. William Tenny arrived and became one of the regions first postmasters, carrying the mail in his hat from Farmington to Walled Lake. Benjamin Hance and Henry Harrington increased the numbers of the budding community and by 1831 Eliphat Hungerford had planted the first apple orchard in the Walled Lake vicinity.  

The lake was attractive, the soil was good, and the land was cheap. But it didn't quite explain the migrations from the East. There was a restlessness, perhaps a disenchantment with things as they were. The attractive and inexpensive lands of the Midwest and Far West served as a kind of safety valve for the discontented, the dreamers, and those just looking for new roots. Whatever their reasons, these rugged settlers cleared the land and made it produce.

The development of Walled Lake as a village gained new impetus in 1834 when a State territorial road extending from Ann Arbor to Pontiac was surveyed to pass along the shores of Walled Lake. It was called Pontiac Trail. There was no more need to ride horseback through the underbrush to Farmington for supplies. The new road attracted business necessary for growth.  

Bill Adams had built a log store near the cemetery in 1833, but most every­one agreed that his chief product was whiskey "plenteously diluted with the beautiful blue water of the lake." And while his dispensing of bourbon to the weary traveler was greatly appreciated, it was thought that the town could do with more respectable enterprises. Bill Deuel opened a store on the lakeshore opposite Jesse Tuttle's home. The Deuel store, later purchased by Ben Brown, became one of the finest general stores in Oakland County. The store was a friendly place, containing not only the village post office, but a "tooth-pulling service" which Ben offered his friends, before he went off to serve in the State legislature.  

In 1833, after he had converted his log home into an "Inn" to handle the transient trade, Will Jarvis sold the home to Jesse Tuttle, who continued to meet the needs of the occasional traveler making his way through the wilderness on the few Indian trails available. It was the same Jesse Tuttle who, three years later, put together the original plat of Walled Lake.  Although difficult to imagine the need for one this soon, Harmon Pettibone built the Pioneer Inn in 1840 to serve as a summer resort and hotel.  

When Hiram Barritt built the first frame home in the area in 1833, the need for skilled carpenters and masons increased rapidly. Still standing and owned by Mary Weborg today, this Greek revival home reflects the drastic change from the pioneer log cabin to a more modern and lasting structure.  

Lumber was hauled by team from Pontiac or Farmington until 1840, when Harmon Pettibone decided that was too far to haul lumber for his new "Inn" and so he constructed a sawmill on the north side of Walled Lake. Purchased by Jacob Moore in 1858, it provided lumber for village residents for more than twenty-five years.  Working in the mill as tail-sawyer for his father was young Joe Moore, later to become a Justice of the Michigan Supreme Court.  

The farmers' need for fruit barrels, water barrels, flour barrels, and barrels for cider led the cooperage industry to Walled Lake. The first cooper, W. T. Banks, arrived in 1833, followed later by John Pickett.  

Old-timers still recall Bill Pennell, the village blacksmith, strolling along the dusty streets. Built like a bull, six feet tall, dirty face and brawny arms, his body was covered from neck to toe with that huge leather apron. The best-remembered of the blacksmiths, Pennell expanded his business to in­clude the manufacture of wagons. Arriving from New York in 1854, he was a Walled Lake fixture for more than forty years. Small villages of the mid­Nineteenth century v,TOuld have been incomplete without their Pennells and Tuttles and Moores and Browns. They were typical of any community and they were its "backbone."  

Every town has its leading citizens who seem to give more than others. One of those in Walled Lake was Dr. James Hoyt, the third doctor to settle in Oakland County. Graduating from Geneva Medical College in New York in 1839, Dr. Hoyt came to Commerce village in 1840, moving to Walled Lake three years later where he lived until his death in 1904. Often making his own home remedies-remember that nerve medicine made from the root of a lady slipper? -- and charging little or nothing to those who couldn't pay, Dr. Hoyt served Walled Lake for more than thirty .years, retiring in 1876 when his eyesight began to fail. Other names in medicine appeared in Walled Lake: Chapman, Bullard, Martindale, Lindsey, and finally MacKen­zie in the 1950's when the village was still a one-doctor town.  

Early sources disagree on the site of Walled Lake's first school. Some say it was on the south side of the village near the site of the present Lakeside Market. Most agree, however, that it was on Dr. Hoyt's property northeast of town. In any case, the year was 1834, it was a log cabin, and Walled Lake's first teacher was Fanny Tuttle. By 1860, a more solid "Stonecrest" was built in the heart of the village for $789.00 and it served the educational needs of the community until 1896. A new frame building on the west side of town, now the Masonic Hall, was built in that year and was Walled Lake's school­house until 1922.  

While the small community school was a unifying bond for most com­munities, consolidation with other districts, some felt, would destroy that unique and distinct flavor of the village school. With the completion of Walled Lake Western High School in 1969, the Walled Lake school system boasted ten elementary schools, two Junior High buildings and two Senior High Schools. Stretching from Twelve Mile Road on the South to Oxbow Lake on the North, Walled Lake's school system had, by 1970, become one of Michigan's most advanced. Headed by Superintendent Clifford Smart for nearly twenty years, and, since 1965, by George Garver, there are now almost 500 teachers and more than 10,000 students.  

There was no great surge in Walled Lake's growth during those early years. Most of the nation had never heard of it. Just a sleepy little village with its town pump and the Pioneer Inn with its bouncing dance floor. Walled Lake's population in 1877 was a mere 400. There was a general store, Mrs. Cozad's grist mill, a cider factory, a cooper shop, two blacksmiths, a sawmill, a Baptist Church, and a Methodist Church. While the nation, in those first years of Rutherford Hayes' administration, was recovering from a serious economic recession, Walled Lake, largely unaffected by outside forces, just "plugged along."  

The most exciting and enjoyable job in the winter was "getting up ice." The town butcher aI1d private citizens filled their ice houses to prepare for hot weather. With crosscut saw, one handle removed, the ice was cut in rectangles about two feet wide and three feet long. The ice on Walled Lake during the winter was two feet thick and heavy. But with the use of huge ice tongs the cakes of ice were hauled to the storage houses and buried in sawdust for summer use.  

Shortly after the turn of the century, the rural character of Walled Lake began to change. With the Michigan Airline Railroad coming through the village in 1883, and the solid gravel roads to Pontiac and Detroit by World War I, Walled Lake was now a cross-roads with the rest of Michigan.  

Telephone service had come to town before the Twentieth century. Be­ginning in Steve Gage's Grocery Store with one line and one phone, it was used mostly for emergencies. Shortly after 1900, a group of citizens headed by Doc Chapman, Clark Jones, and Bob Carnes organized a stock company to provide more efficient phone service. In 1911 the switchboard was moved to Will Chafy's home, and in 1915 the stock company was able to erect a building to house the business and provide living quarters for the first man­ager, Powell Killiam, and his family.  

By 1920, E. V. Mercer had purchased the telephone company that was suffering from damage caused by severe. ice storms. By 1929, the company was in good condition and Mercer sold the business (which had. 350 sub­scribers) to Michigan Bell.  

Men like Henry Ford had put America on wheels and Walled Lake, Detroit's nearest large lake, was to see bumper-to-bumper traffic on hot Sunday afternoons. Bathhouses and dance pavilions were built. Housing developments like Cenaqua Shores were started on the south shore of the lake. In the heart of this plan the famous Amusement Park would be built in the late 1920's. With forty and fifty foot lots selling for $350.00, it would even­tually become a badly congested area with summer cottages on undersized lots converted to year-round homes.

  In 1970, the Walled Lake area boasts 82 businesses. They range from Bruce Protchett's one-man operation in lathe work to Ex-cell-o Corporation's 1200 man payroll. Unusual industries from Elmer Connelly's portable campers to Williams Research Co., are part of the industrial make-up. But the village of Walled Lake is gone. The town pump, the Pioneer Inn, and the Casino are only memories. The business center has shifted from the shores of the lake to Maple Road a few blocks to the north. A city has taken the place of the village; a city which will soon become part of a continually expanding Megopolis.  

The twenty-five counties surrounding Detroit, including portions of Ohio and Ontario, had a population of 4.7 million in 1940. By 1970 the population had doubled and by 2000 it may hit 20 million. Cutting a wide path across the southern portion of Michigan, reaching from Port Huron to northern Ohio and merging with Chicago and Pittsburgh, it will completely envelope Walled Lake and other small communities. Such growth is inevitable and as a result, the rural American phenomena, the village, is disappearing. The rise of the city continues and brushes aside the farms and country towns of an American civilization we knew.         

The Council-City Manager form of government had its beginning in the late '20's in Oakland County. The City form of government is predominantly under the direction of a City Manager who is trained in the field and serves at the pleasure of the City Council or Commission. An outstanding example of the Professional City Manager is Royce L. Downey, who is serving his second city at the age of 43.

In the past 5 years, his community has developed a Master Plan to guide it from a predominant mixture of old summer cottages and post World War No.2 constructed houses with local convenience shopping, into an emerging center of a growing Megopolis. Under this Plan a quiet residential community is emerging, surrounding a comparison shopping district. The plan is so designed that a growing Industrial Park will allow for a reasonable tax rate to support the affairs of government.

Excerpted from Oakland County Book of History (1970), p. 297-302