Becoming the “Key West of the North”: Queer Tourism in Saugatuck and Douglas, Michigan, in the Mid-20th Century

In 1981, the Douglas Dunes Resort opened in the sleepy beach-side town of Douglas, Michigan. The opening of the resort was the climax of nearly seventy years of queer community formation in Douglas and its sister city, Saugatuck, and its opening catapulted the towns into national acclaim as one of the largest queer resorts in the country. This paper contextualizes this rise to fame by considering the queer history of the towns that precipitated this opening. Specifically, it examines the midcentury queer tourism that laid the groundwork for the Dunes’ eventual success. By considering a period rife with conservative rhetoric and homophobic legislation, the paper examines how the towns garnered regional acclaim for its hospitality and how queer people remade the spaces into viable sites of queer community building. The paper also seeks to consider why these small towns, located in the most conservative part of Michigan, were willing to accommodate this growing queer subculture. If rural spaces are supposedly inherently hostile to those with queer identities, why were these twin lakeshore communities willing to set their presumed hostility aside to embrace its new queer travelers? This paper argues that at least some of the tolerance of queer embodiment was part of a financial calculus to save the towns from economic decline. Queer travelers, many of which were well-resourced, brought with them significant tourist dollars, and many of the social institutions in the area shifted their own practices to encourage queer tourism. In some ways, the queer tourist community of Lake Michigan bought their increasing acceptance. By considering the eventual burning of the Blue Tempo, though, the institution that had become West Michigan’s first de facto gay bar, the paper also interrogates the limitations of such “bought” tolerance.