Annie Oakley slept here: Hillsdale's Keefer House

When the circus came through Hillsdale, the stars stayed at the Keefer. Charles and Henry Keefer, a father and son, put the hotel up at the main downtown corner in 1885, back when Hillsdale was a busy stop on the railroad and a fine hotel was the first thing a town built to prove it had arrived. The Keefer had fifty-four guest rooms, a dining room, two saloons, and a gambling room, and the depot sat close enough that travelers were carried over by horse-drawn carriage almost as soon as they stepped off the train.

The guest list reads like a tour poster. Buffalo Bill Cody and Annie Oakley both signed in. So did the Ringling brothers, hauling their traveling circus through southern Michigan. The hotel did double duty in quieter ways too — rooms were used for doctor’s visits and for laying out the dead before a funeral, so the same building that hosted sharpshooters also served as a part-time hospital and parlor for grieving families.

Railroads faded, and so did the Keefer. It eventually sat vacant for about twenty years, the kind of grand old empty building a downtown either loses or saves. Hillsdale saved this one. A multi-year restoration brought it back as a boutique hotel, and the crews worked hard to keep what made it worth saving — the mosaic floors, the pressed-tin ceiling, the original millwork all stayed.

It runs leaner now, around thirty-some rooms instead of fifty-four, with a restaurant downstairs. But the corner is the same corner where a carriage once met every train, and somewhere in the guest register’s long memory, Annie Oakley is still checked in.