Original ‘Coast Guard City’ earns its ‘top billing’

People in Grand Haven, Mich., have a love affair with the U.S. Coast Guard, and they proudly celebrate every summer with a wing-ding Coast Guard Festival that runs for 10 consecutive days.

Recreational boaters tread water in Lake Michigan to sound their horns to welcome the “parade of ships,” a flotilla of assorted Coast Guard vessels, as it approaches the venerable red lighthouse on Grand Haven’s iconic South Pier. Spectators line both banks of the Grand River to cheer the arrival of the Coast Guardsmen.

 

The entire festival is a huge display of patriotism, centered around Coast Guard Station Grand Haven on the Grand River. Coast Guardsmen and their families view the assignment to attend and participate in the festivities as an honor…and a perk.

 

Former Coast Guard pageant queens (above) are honored to participate in the street parade.

Grand Haven is America’s original “Coast Guard City,” a designation that was awarded by the U.S. Congress in 1998. (Since then, 33 more U.S. cities or counties have qualified to become official “Coast Guard Communities,” including Carteret County, N.C., in 2015.)

 

Grand Haven was selected in 1877 as a site for one of the early U.S. Life-Saving Service stations on the Great Lakes.

When the U.S. Coast Guard was established in 1915, Grand Haven became a district headquarters, because of its strategic location in western Michigan. As the crow flies across Lake Michigan, the distance from Grand Haven to Milwaukee, Wis., is about 75 miles, and Chicago, Ill., is about 110 miles southwest of Grand Haven.

Grand Haven’s Coast Guard Festival claims 1924 as its founding date, when a picnic was organized on the base and the Coast Guardsmen held surfboat rowing competitions on the Grand River.

(The centennial Coast Guard Festival in 2024 attracted an estimated 400,000 attendees, a new record. A local television station reported that a downtown ice cream shop ramped up its staffing to have 20 scoopers standing by ready to serve the influx of visitors.)

The community was overjoyed in 1932, when the newly built 165-foot Coast Guard cutter Escanaba was stationed at Grand Haven to patrol the regional waters. The new vessel was constructed at the Defoe Shipbuilding Company in Bay City, Mich.

She was a beauty of a workhorse. Named for the city and river in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, the Escanaba performed ice breaking and search and rescue missions on the Great Lakes. 

(For a time, Escanaba’s gunnery officer and navigator was Edwin J. Roland, who is shown below. He went on to serve as Coast Guard Commandant from 1962-66.)

In the winter of 1934, the Escanaba rescued the crew of the lake freighter Henry Cort after the ship had run aground in Muskegon, Mich., during a gale. All 25 crew members from the Henry Cort were safely retrieved by the Escanaba, before the crashing waves broke the battered ship in half.

Admiration for the Escanaba grew, and the annual Coast Guard picnic at Grand Haven became a true festival in 1937.

In October 1940, with the threat of war looming, the Escanaba traveled to Manitowoc, Wis., to be refitted with new weaponry…just in case.

After the United States became engaged in World War II in December 1941, the Escanaba knew her work of providing help and rescue for ships on Lake Michigan had ended; she left to fight in March 1942.

Gladys Brook, a resident of Grand Haven, remarked: “Havenites were proud that our ship (the Escanaba) could help in the war.”

The ship with her crew of 105 Coast Guardsmen reported for duty in Boston, Mass., now effectively flying the flag of the U.S. Navy.