Forgotten no more

Lifelong resident works to preserve history of Lake Byron

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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.”

“But I was always told that the Indians called Lake Byron “Toad Lake,” he said, because of the trees along the edge.
“But that could have been a different tribe of Indians that called it that,” Gross said. “Different tribes probably had different names for it.”
His research has revealed accounts of camps, drownings, droughts, fires, storms, dances and baseball games. The lake offered a summer resort for fishing, boating and swimming.
“Lake Byron was going to be quite a place,” he said. “There’s just so much that I found out.”
A dance pavilion was built in 1918 and burned down about 1927 or 1928. The Lake Byron Water Boys played baseball with area town teams at a ball diamond complete with bleachers for the fans.
“I’d love to find pictures of the team,” Gross said. “There’s got to be pictures of the team out there somewhere.”
Life at the lake was more seasonal than year-round, likely due to the far more primitive living conditions.
In 1883, Lewis Kimball Jr. homesteaded on the land where the Gross family later settled.
“He was big in the government,” Gross said. “He worked for senators and with the secretaries for multiple agencies.”
Kimball was invited to inaugural balls and traveled extensively. While he followed his political aspirations, his brother farmed their land. But he also brought home a lot of money.
“His estate was described as the most beautiful plantation in the area,” Gross said.
Lake Byron has had its share of tough times, as well.
It dried up in the 1890s and 1930s. The lake level was low in the late 1970s.
“She’s gone dry quite a few times,” Gross said. “And there is the folklore that there was always a threshing machine at the bottom of Lake Byron. And they farmed it in the 1930s.
“Which they probably did,” he said. “But actually, from what I found out, the thresh machine was left in there in the 1890s when it was dry.”
The newspaper account he found reported that a wooden threshing machine got stuck in the 1890s. When the lake went dry in the “Dirty Thirties,” area farmers looked for it, but it had disintegrated over the 40 past years.
“That was kind of a fun fact to get corrected because everybody believes the ’30s. Well, it was the ’90s that she got stuck,” Gross said.
He has found photos of the “Queen of the Lake,” a double-decker cruise ship that once took people on leisurely tours, probably in the mid-1920s.
“I don’t think she lasted long, because I cannot find any information on this boat in any paper so far,” he said. “But she was there.”
There was even a landing strip in the 1920s for airplane rides to the lake and back.
Lake Byron was part of the city’s effort to win enough votes to become the capital.
With a photo of the lake on the cover, one brochure reads: “A few right reasons why Huron should be the capital.”
But it wasn’t convincing enough and Pierre came out on top.
An orchestra played at some functions. There was a rodeo in the 1930s. Many people hosted parties at their cabins, which at the time they referred to as cottages. There was also a fish hatchery.
The roads between Huron and Lake Byron were poor, and there were many accidents.
Gross plans to write a book at some point. He has had fun doing research.
“It needs to be done,” he said, “because it’s been forgotten.”

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.