The Ortonville Pioneer Hotel on M-15 near Bald Eagle Lake stands ready for road travelers — complete with a boat-shaped “HOTEL PIONEER” sign out front and a “LIQUORS” banner by the door. This image survives as a Michigan photographic postcard, capturing the era when highways brought steady business to lakeside stops offering meals, rooms, and drinks.
A note found with this clip adds another link: it says the Ortonville Hotel Yolande was owned by William Sprague, who also ran the Pioneer Hotel, and that the site was later called the Boat Bar. The hotel was called the Bald Lake Resort in Sprague’s obituary in 1960.
The exact year isn’t printed here, but the car’s appearance suggests a date of about the 1940s. If you’ve got family ties to Bald Eagle Lake or remember this building in another life, you might recognize more details than the postcard gives us.
What do you know or remember about the Pioneer Hotel — or the businesses that came after it?
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