Eden Springs Park at the House of David

Anne-Marie and I arrived at the RV Park, located the nearest to downtown St Joseph, here in south west Michigan.  The St Joseph River separates two cities, Benton Harbor and St Joseph, and before we arrived I thought that it was all the same town.  The Park owners were busy with the miniature train line that they have rebuilt, when we arrived, and after we were setup at our site, I walked around the park.  This place has a lot of history clear back to 1903, when it was a religious society, colony, commune, and built up to hundreds of members, and the grounds were built up to be an attraction for thousands of visitors.  The grounds had over a mile of miniature train tracks, a small zoo, pony rides, baseball teams, over 100 hotel rooms and cabins for overnight guests, and they could feed and entertain over 1000 guests a day.  I read where this amusement park, pre Disneyland, was one of the largest in the country, in its day.  The core group had political issues between them and seem to have fractured apart a few times.  The grounds have fallen into disrepair, and in some areas become overgrown to the point of unrecognizable.  The current owners of the RV Park, are in the process of expanding the miniature railroad to a greater length than original track area.
 
The deteriorating structures are fenced off so as to keep visitors, like myself, from getting hurt.  The railroad tracks have been newly rebuilt.

I found this picture online, and it shows that this was a large, and grand hotel in its day.

This shows the train depot, with the arched roof, and the old hotel in the back.  The owner told me that the depot building has been rebuilt a few times in the last 100 years.

There is a Museum and walking tours of the other side of the grounds, called Mary’s City of David, apparently when the group divided, so did the property back in the 1930s.

St Joseph is a coastal town with beaches and parks, and the St Joseph river has pleasure and working boats docked along each side of the bridges entering into downtown.  We drove through a part of the downtown area last night, and something was happening, there wasn’t any parking, and a lot of people were on the sidewalks.

The TV channels seem to come from Milwaukee Wisconsin about 80 miles away across Lake Michigan, and the antenna is very sensitive on where it is pointed to keep reception.  This is a bit confusing because when using TVguide.com the programing is off by an hour, because we are in Eastern Standard Time Zone.