News History & Fun in Michigan
Before freeways and food courts, Michigan’s highways were lined with quirky tourist towers. These towering attractions offered sky-high views, cold milk, and bragging rights. Let’s revisit the glory days of Michigan’s roadside observation towers.
The Walker Tavern at Cambridge Junction was built in 1832 along the Old Chicago Road. Its story reveals how Michigan travel evolved—from Indigenous trails to stagecoaches, highways, and roadside tourism.
Michigan’s beautiful landscape of rolling hills, sparkling lakes, and thick forests inspired early 20th-century entrepreneurs to build scenic lookout towers to entice the new generation of automobile tourists. In the 1910s and 1920s, as motoring became popular, roadside observation towers sprang …
