by Dan West
Staff Writer
In a time before it was popular to travel up North for summer weekend getaways, Walled Lake was the place to be.
From the 1920s to the 1960s, the southern shore of Walled Lake was an entertainment mecca for those from metro Detroit and beyond with the Walled Lake Amusement Park and Walled Lake Casino Shores Pavilion.
Even at 93 years old, Mary Weborg vividly recalls the good times she had while working at the park from 1947 to 1962.
"People had a real good time there," Weborg said. "There was no rowdiness there. And the workers, we all had a good time and we were all treated well."
With the advent of mass automobile production during the first 20 years of this century, families would spend their Sundays driving 25 miles along Grand River Avenue from Detroit to Walled Lake, one of major lakes northwest of Detroit.
Observing the popularity of waterfront activity, some Walled Lake businessmen developed enterprises to entertain weekend visitors.
It began in 1919 when Jake and Ernest Taylor opened a dance hall near the present-day Novi-13 Mile Road intersection.
Two years later, Herman Czenkusch provided some competition when he developed a waterfront cottage community, dance hall and water slides down the road from the Taylors' complex.
The Taylors could not keep up with Czenkusch so they sold their hall to the Tolettene family in 1923. The Tolettenes invested heavily into the dance hall during the 1920s. With constant expansion and modernizations, the Casino Shores Pavilion evolved into a dance hall that feature performances by well-known orchestras and bands, such as Finzel's Orchestra, and attracted more than 2,500 people on weekend nights.
Czenkusch could not keep up with the Tolettenes, and in 1929, transformed his dance hall into a roller skating rink. This rink became the cornerstone for the amusement park.
Roller coaster builder Fred Pierce came to Walled Lake with a plan to build an amusement park. Czenkusch leased his land to Pierce who started to build the park by constructing the Flying Dragon, which at the time was one of the nation's largest roller coasters.
Together, the park and pavilion offered other entertainment, such as speed boat rides for 15 to 25 cents each, water slides and waterfront access for family picnics.
After World War II, with a new generation of Tolettene leadership, casino business strengthened with performances from big-name entertainers such as Louis Armstrong and Lawrence Welk, who maintained a residence near Walled Lake.
Helen Foss, a city council member who has lived in Walled Lake since 1955, recalls her time at the casino and some stories about it she heard from her neighbors.
"A lot of the musicians who played at the casino would stay at the cottages with the people while they were here," Foss said.
At the park, the Pierce family added more popular rides, such as Dodge-Em cars and the Tilt-A-Whirl, which attracted more people and major picnic gatherings.
Weborg said Ford Motor Co. held an employee family picnic at the Walled Lake Amusement Park that drew more than 25,000 people in one day.
"On some of the busiest days, I remember counting $50,000 for one day," said Weborg, who worked in the park's office when she wasn't teaching at area schools. "We didn't charge admission. We just sold food and ride tickets for 5 cents each. Some rides would cost three, four, or five tickets.
"There were some days we would work from 8 in the morning to 2 o'clock the following morning," said Weborg.
In 1960, the combination of television's growing popularity and shift of music interests forced management to change the pavilion's entertainment offerings. The pavilion became a dance club with radio disk-jockeys spinning rock-and-roll tunes.
"We went there a few times after we moved here and I remember how it had one of those globes in the ballroom (mirrorball) that reflected light as you danced," Foss said.
The pavilion stage held one of the first concert performances by Little Stevie Wonder and a show by Chuck Berry.
For a few more years, the pavilion continued to draw more than 2,000 people for dancing and entertainment. In the mid-1960s, popularity dwindled and entertainment formats changed again. In December 1965, an accidental fire devastated the pavilion.
For the park, the death of Pierce turned over control to his less-enthusiastic son, Fred Pierce Jr., who sold the park in 1962 to the Wagner family who renamed in Edgewater Park.
The growth of the Metroparks system, Boblo Island and television combined with the park's aging equipment led to its demise at the end of the 1968 season when it was dismantled.
"There was a lack of interest in that type of entertainment," Weborg said. "I miss what it was and what it did in those days.
"It was entertainment for those kind of days."
Some information for this story was taken from the 1994 video, "Walled Lake Casino - Amusement Park Documentary."