LAKE BYRON — Not long after the city of Huron was established, families with a few extra dollars to spare could travel to Lake Byron for camp meetings and picnics by booking passage on a steam boat piloted on the James River by a man by the name of Captain Bowe.
In one newspaper account in 1888, he announced that he would be leaving at 8 a.m. and that the fare for a round trip was $1. A carriage ride from the river to the campground was 15 cents, or 25 cents to get back to the boat.
“A dollar was quite a bit back in 1888,” said Andy Gross, a lifelong resident of the lake. “It was kind of a rich man’s lake. I mean, you had to have money to get there.”
By the turn of the century, two Iowa businessmen with really deep pockets had big plans for the lake in Beadle County.
Gross, who is researching lake history to preserve as much as he can find so it’s not lost any longer so many years later, said Peter Kiene and Franc Altman began buying land, primarily in Lake Byron Township, after coming to Beadle County around 1900.
They and John H. King improved the surrounding property and started looking for investors for such amenities as a trolley line.
King was an important man in Huron. He had a greenhouse nursery north of town. He owned a land agency, was in government and ran a few other businesses.
“He was very influential in getting the artesian well project started,” Gross said. “He also brought the first telephone line to Lake Byron in 1901, I think it was. He also owned the first automobile in the county.”
There were even plans to establish a town west of the lake, a place they would call “Altman.” By 1908, an electric railway was in the works. But a year later, it all fell apart financially and neither the rail line nor the town was realized.
Since November, Gross has been compiling as many newspaper accounts and photos as he can find. He’s hoping others will come forward with items they have saved over the years.
“It’s important to me and everybody else because this stuff has been forgotten, nobody remembers this,” Gross said.
“Lake Byron was such a big part of our community for so many years and it still is,” he said. “Actually, it’s kind of coming back more than it ever has now with new houses going up and a renewed interest in the lake.”
The earliest newspaper article he has found so far was published in the Yankton Press & Dakotan on April 21, 1882.
Apparently quoting the Huron Times, it read: On the plats of the Watertown land office the sheet of water in the northern portion of the county formerly called Connor’s Lake and lately styled Lake Minooka is described as Lake Byron.”
“So that’s officially when the lake got its name, I’d say,” Gross said.
Pottawatomi Indians were said to call it Minooka, or “meeting of waters.”
PHOTOS CONTRIBUTED
A young girl and boy are shown on the northwest side of the lake, with buggies in the background.
Next, camping, fishing and swimming were past-time activities of visitors to Lake Byron in this 1920s-era photo taken of people on the southeast side of Lake Byron.
Next, the “Queen of the Lake” was a double-decker boat that took people for leisurely rides on Lake Byron in about the mid-1920s.
And next, Kozy Kamp was one of the businesses offering hunting lodges on the northeast side of the lake.