Porch Notes
Benton Harbor and the House of David
History and culture
Benton Harbor has one of the strangest and most colorful stories in Michigan. In 1903, a traveling preacher named Benjamin Purnell and his wife Mary founded a religious colony here called the Israelite House of David. They believed the end of the world was near and that they were gathering the faithful to build a new Eden. Members lived simply and by strict rules — no meat, no alcohol or tobacco, and the men never cut their hair or shaved, so they were easy to spot by their long hair and beards.
The colony grew to around a thousand people and ran an astonishing range of businesses, but two things made it famous far beyond Michigan. One was its baseball team: the bearded players barnstormed across the country for decades, drawing crowds and sometimes facing big-league stars (as the story goes, Babe Ruth once put on a fake beard to play them). The other was Eden Springs Park, an amusement park the colony opened to the public in 1908, complete with a zoo and the world’s largest miniature railway. Hundreds of thousands of visitors came every summer — it was one of the Midwest’s biggest attractions. Walt Disney even bought one of the colony’s little steam locomotives.
After its founder’s death and years of legal troubles, the colony faded, and the park eventually closed. But Eden Springs Park has been restored, and you can still ride the miniature trains there on summer weekends and tour the grounds and museum.
Eden Springs Park, 789 M-139, Benton Harbor · edenspringspark.org