The Grand Haven fountain that danced before Las Vegas thought of it

On a summer night in Grand Haven, the hillside across the river lights up and starts to dance. Jets of water leap and sway to music while colored lights wash over them, all of it choreographed song by song. The spot to watch is the waterfront downtown; the show itself plays out on Dewey Hill, the wooded rise on the far bank of the Grand River.

The whole thing came from a dentist’s memory. Bill Creason, a Grand Haven dentist who later served as mayor, had seen a musical fountain in Germany after World War II and couldn’t shake it. Local engineer William Booth II drew up the design, and in 1962 volunteers built the fountain for around $50,000. The first summer show ran on May 30, 1963, and people have been gathering on warm evenings ever since.

For a long stretch, this small Lake Michigan town held a genuine title: the Grand Haven Musical Fountain was the largest of its kind anywhere in the world. It kept that distinction for 35 years, right up until 1998, when the Fountains of Bellagio went in along the Las Vegas Strip and took the crown with a budget Grand Haven could only laugh at.

What’s striking is that the Bellagio is run by a casino empire, and this one is still a hometown affair. Shows run nightly through the summer, each built around a theme — a sci-fi night, a country night, a patriotic night — with the songs swapped to fit. The operators write the choreography by hand, matching every spray and fade to the beat.

So you sit on the grass or the boardwalk as the light fades, the river goes dark, and the hill across the water comes alive with water that knows the music.