Continuously serving Kosciusko County since 1854
When Sol Dickey purchased Spring Fountain Park from the Beyer brothers in 1894, the deed included a 55-acre peninsula that jutted out from the eastern shore of the lake. It was flat, marshy and infested with rattlesnakes and muskrats. Al Cuffel, who was employed to help clear the vegetation, recorded killing 22 rattlesnakes in one day.
After the Beyer brothers established Spring Fountain Park in 1890, a drill and parade ground called Carnahan Military Park was built on the peninsula. The park was a popular site for leisure activities such as encampments and Civil War reenactments. It was named for James Carnahan, a member of the Assembly’s board of directors, a veteran of the Civil War, a lawyer, a judge and the founder of a fraternal organization called the Knights of Pythias.
One of the summer programming highlights each year was the performance of the Indian passion play “Hiawatha,” dramatized from the familiar Longfellow poem of the same name. The performance was given on a floating stage just off McDonald Island, and the cast included a band of about 40 braves, squaws, and children from the Indian reservations of northern New York.
According to a 1909 summer program, “The story of Hiawatha, his wooing of the maiden of another tribe, the wedding ceremony, with songs, dances and feasts, the blight of the famine, the death of Minnehaha and the farewell of Hiawatha are woven into a pictured story that is highly satisfactory to those who witness these performances.”
“Stage embellishments” which added to the effectiveness included “wigwams, camp fires, and the general wildness of an Indian camp.” The cast, between performances, “will make their camp on the Winona Lake front. There they will live in their wigwams as in primitive days, the braves and squaws at their daily tasks and diversions and the children at their pastimes. The camp will be open to visitors at given hours during each day.”
The park enjoyed a high level of activity. Cadets from the Culver (Ind.) Military Academy camped on McDonald’s Island. There was a convention of Indiana newspaper editors. A band comprised of paperboys from Indianapolis and a band made up of Canadians in Scottish kilts was in town for concerts. A number of church groups were having conferences, and there was a national choral contest.
Novelty acts, often contracted at considerable expense by Winona’s management, added excitement and anticipation to the summer programming. One such event was the much-advertised arrival of Airship Columbia, a huge dirigible which flew briefly at Winona in August 1906. As many as 15,000 people were said to be on the grounds for at least some of the days the airship was in Winona Lake.
“Venetian Nights” was a great midsummer water festival when all the water craft owned by the Assembly and by individuals were elaborately decorated and afloat. The lake shores would be “ablaze with colored lights, music will be by Rogers’ Band,” according to the summer program. A carnival queen was selected by popular vote, with the coronation of the queen occurring at a reception the night before the carnival.
In a speech given in August of 1919, Solomon Dickey gave credit to Alexander McDonald, elder of the Third Presbyterian Church of Cincinnati and president of the Standard Oil Co. of Kentucky, as one of the founders of Winona. Dickey described McDonald as, “with Mr. Studebaker ... one of the most generous friends Winona ever had.” McDonald gave the money to purchase and build the dredge that created the canal. He bought the iron bridges which spanned the canal, and McDonald Island was named in his honor. Note that this man was NOT the Dr. Angus McDonald, for whom McDonald Hospital was named.
It was in the summer program for 1900 that Dickey’s report as secretary and general manager described “Winona’s Best Scheme.”
“Uncle John Thorpe, of Chicago, the landscape artist, who laid out the World’s Fair Grounds, has presented to the directors a unique plan. . . His plan is to cut a canal 80 feet wide from the west end of the present bath house to the lake just in the rear of the Inn ... thus making an island of the ground including and adjacent to the present half-mile race track.
“He provides for two bridges, two boulevards 80 feet wide, an esplanade 40 feet wide running around the entire shore, several promenades and about 300 fine building lots. The lake will be lowered one foot and kept at a certain level by means of a dam at the outlet. The surface of the island will be raised about two feet by means of dredging, taking dirt from canal and shore of present land. The lots will thus be more than four feet higher than the lake. A perfect sewerage system is found feasible and will be guaranteed.”
The dredging and creation of the canal were accomplished two years later, in 1902, due largely to the largesse of McDonald.
The next year’s report said that the need for funding was presented to McDonald, who “quickly grasped the situation and generously provided the necessary means.” It was found that a dredge with a dipper of more than a cubic yard capacity could be operated at an expense, including coal, of only $10 a day, and so McDonald provided the needed dredge. As of Feb. 20, 1901, it was reported that “a canal 25 feet wide and about five feet deep has been constructed across the peninsula, transforming it into an island.” The plans called for a next cutting, which would widen the canal to 50 feet, with an intention of eventually making it 70 or possibly 80 feet in width.
Near the south mouth of the canal stands a modest frame home called “Rainbow Point.” It was the home of Homer Rodeheaver, Billy Sunday’s songleader and an entrepreneur who eventually built the country’s largest gospel music publishing house.
Dickey’s Killarney Castle
Winona Lake’s most eccentric structure, located on Esplanade Avenue at the tip of the island overlooking the lake, was built in 1902 by Dr. Solomon Dickey and was built of tin and shingle to the scale of a castle in Killarney, Ireland. Because it was built as a summer home, incorporation of outdoor space was important in the layout. Large porches on three sides of the house gave it a light and airy feeling and provided natural cooling from lake breezes. The castle was the first building built on the island.
Originally the Dickey family’s cottage, it has since served as a rooming house, apartments, and publishing house complete with offices, auditorium, and puppet stage. Dr. Dickey owned the castle until his death in 1920 at which time ownership passed to his wife. On Mrs. Dickey’s death a few years later, their only son, Lincoln, became owner of the castle. Lincoln retained ownership for several years before selling it.
The castle has a total of 12 rooms (plus porches and baths). There are four bedrooms and three full baths. Over the years, alterations to the house included the enclosure of the once-open porches. Once described by the “Fort Wayne Journal Gazette” as a “shingle-and-tin fortress,” the castle features a living room that looks up to an octagonal balcony. A bust of Dickey still sits in the living room, a gift to the current residents, who purchased the castle in 1985 from a garage sale scout. The castle’s restoration was completed in July 2005.
During the time the castle was home to Lambert Huffman Publishers, Huffman said in private correspondence that the center room ceiling was closed when he took over the facility, and he made it into a little theater “to display my wares by 16 mm movie, the screen being on the south side and the projector on the north.” According to Huffman, “30 theater seats from a Chicago theater gave it a very elegant and cozy atmosphere.”
William Jennings Bryan, famous orator and three-time presidential candidate, stayed in the front turreted bedroom of the castle on his frequent trips to Winona.
The Ghost of Merbrink
Premiere among the “mystery properties” in Winona is the Merbrink, a lakefront two-story home with a wraparound porch which sits on the waterfront at the northwest tip of McDonald Island, four doors from Sol Dickey’s Killarney Castle.
Local writer Shari Benyousky has investigated and propagated the legends of the Merbrink. A recipient of an Indiana Arts Commission Individual Artist Grant, she wrote a manuscript about Merbrink and its famous ghost named Miss Phebe.
According to legend, which will be detailed in a future column, W. H. Bruning, the wealthy president of the F. J. Bruning and Son Company, wholesale spice and tea merchants of Evansville, Indiana, and New York, built the home in 1903.
The finely-appointed home became the victim of unrequited love, which involved a young lady from the family that managed rental properties on Swiss Terrace. No marriage occurred, and the house was never occupied, but there was a baby named Chloe, and Phebe was the baby’s nanny. Benyousky’s blog is at http://winonalakehauntedhouse.blogspot.com. The tale of the house and Miss Phebe are also told in “Kosciusko County, an Oral and Pictorial History” by Daniel Coplen.
The board of directors of the Winona Lake Christian Assembly built a 27-unit motel in the center of McDonald Island in 1952 and 1953. It was used by conference attendees for most of the 1953 season.
Upon the death of Dr. Arthur McKee on June 4, 1953, at age 62 after 13 years of directing the assembly’s affairs, the board of directors voted to name the new motel “McKee Courts” in his memory. The motel was the last major building project which McKee undertook and supervised, and in the early 60s it was used as a men’s dormitory by Grace College.
The motel was razed in 1997 and the land in the center of the island remains vacant.
Today McDonald Island property is among the most sought-after and most scenic lakefront lots on the east side of the lake. Casual sightseers, driving or jogging the loop around Administration, Esplanade, and Auditorium Boulevards, generally have little notion of the rich and varied history of the peninsula-turned-island.
