There was a roller coaster on Lake Lansing for forty years

The quiet county beach on the south shore of Lake Lansing, in Haslett, used to have a roller coaster. For about forty years, from 1934 into the 1970s, this was a full amusement park — a coaster, a merry-go-round, a Tilt-A-Whirl, dodgem cars, pony rides, a little railroad, the works. People came from all over mid-Michigan to ride and dance.

The lake was called Pine Lake before someone renamed it Lake Lansing in 1927. Even in the 1800s it drew crowds. A trolley line started hauling Lansing folks out to the water in 1879, and a Spiritualist group built a summer camp on the west shore in the 1880s, named Haslett Park for James Haslett, the man who led the project — which is where the town’s name comes from. There was a hotel on the north shore, a bathhouse, boathouses, and a dance hall. The old Pine Lake House later became the Dells Ballroom, and dances there got so popular that people drove in from out of state.

The amusement park finally closed, and in 1974 Ingham County bought the south shore and turned it into a public park. Most of the rides scattered. The carousel was sold off to Cedar Point, over on Lake Erie. But the county hung onto the building that had housed it, and that old carousel house still stands at the park as a reminder of what the place used to be.

Now it’s 30 acres of beach, lawn, and shade — a fine spot to swim on a hot afternoon. But if you stand on the grass and squint, you can almost hear the coaster that ran here for two generations, back when the trolley let everybody off at the water’s edge.