The Grand Central Hotel Kinde – From Port Crescent to the Wagon Wheel

What do you do when your town dies? If you're William Carter and William McCoy in 1880s Michigan, you move your hotel — building and all — to where the action is. In this episode of End of the Road in Michigan, we trace the 140-year life of a single building that started in Port Crescent, found new life in Kinde, and reinvented itself as the Grand Central Hotel, Clancy’s, and finally the Wagon Wheel Inn. It’s a story of sawdust, railroads, Friday fish fries, and the long arc of small-town history.

Tune in for a surprising tale of resilience, reinvention, and what happens when a hotel becomes part of a community’s identity. Read the full story at The Amazing Story of the Grand Central Hotel (Kinde, Michigan) – 1880s to 1970s – The Forgotten Inn That Traveled Across Time

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Welcome to End of the Road in Michigan, the podcast that traces the lost trails, the empty

(00:09):
corners, and the faded stories that built this state.
I'm your host, and today we're checking in at a hotel that didn't just outlive the
town it started in.
It got up and moved.
This is the story of a building that stood through wildfires, railroads, elopements, beer
bands, and small town reinvention.
For over a century, it adapted with the times and the people who passed through it.

(00:31):
This is the tale of the Grand Central Hotel and Kindi Michigan, formerly the Crescent House
in what would turn into a ghost town called Port Crescent, and how it became a pillar of
community life in Michigan's thumb.
Our story starts where the pinbog river meets Lake Huron, the site of the long lost town
of Port Crescent.
In the 1870s and early 1880s, this lumber town was alive with sawmills, scooners, and steam

(00:53):
engines, the air smelled of cedar and pine.
This loaded with cut timber sailed for the growing cities of the Midwest, Port Crescent was booming.
And in the center of this boom stood the Crescent Hotel, operated by William Carter and William
McCoy.
They welcomed guests from across the state, traveling merchants, late captains, loggers with
pay in their pockets.

(01:13):
It was more than a place to sleep, it was where deals were made, gossip was shared, and
celebrations rang into the night.
But by 1881, the towns luck turned.
The thumb fire, a wildfire driven by drought and wind, scorched over a million acres across
the region.
Port Crescent survived the flames but not the fallout, the lumber ran out, the mills went
quiet, families left, businesses closed.

(01:36):
Yet Carter and McCoy weren't ready to quit, they believed their hotel still had a purpose,
if not in Port Crescent, then somewhere else.
In an era when most buildings were built to last but not to move, they decided to do the
unthinkable.
They moved the entire structure, beam by beam, or possibly on timber rollers, inland.
We are not sure how it was moved, but it went to a place with promise.

(01:58):
That place was Kindi Michigan.
Founded just a few years earlier, Kindi was growing fast thanks to the arrival of the Port
Huron and Northwestern Railroad in 1882.
With good farmland, a grain elevator, and navy bean and sugar beet crops on the rise,
it became a center for the surrounding agricultural economy.
By the 1890s, Kindi was the beating heart of this stretch of Huron County.

(02:19):
When the Crescent Hotel was reassembled across from the railway depot along Main Street, it
reopened under a new name, the Grand Central Hotel, with a broad front porch, wooden
siding, and a livery stable nearby, it was a familiar sight for travelers arriving by
rail or wagon.
It had style, but not pretension, comfort, but not luxury.
It was a working man's hotel, and it did steady business.

(02:42):
And over the decades, it became a witness to history.
In the summer of 1903, the hotel made headlines, and not for its hospitality.
Two young couples from Northville, Michigan, eloped and fled north, hiding out in Kindi,
but the hotel's proprietor, Peter Bushy, smelled trouble.
He wired authorities by telegraph, and sure enough, two angry fathers showed up on the

(03:04):
night train to drag their children back home.
No wedding, just one very memorable checkout.
Things like that made the hotel more than a building.
It was woven into the town's story, lodge meetings were held there, farmers drank there
after harvest, salesmen passed through, and even as the Great Depression and World War
2 reshaped rural Michigan, the Grand Central endured.

(03:24):
In the 1930s or 1940s, it got another facelift, and a new name.
The exterior was redone in brick masonry, with arched entryways and a wraparound porch.
Locals began calling it the "clancy hotel," likely named after its new owners.
It was still the same old building underneath, but now it had a modern face.
Through the mid-twentieth century, it kept operating as a mix of tavern and boarding house.

(03:48):
Rooms upstairs, bar downstairs, during the prohibition era, the saloon likely went dry, at least
publicly, but by the 1940s, it was again a social spot.
Clancy's was where local shot pool, argued about weather, and remembered better harvests.
And then, another name change.
In the 1960s, it became the wagon wheel in.

(04:08):
The name reflected the rustic Americana aesthetic of the times, wagon wheels, horseshoes, and
hand-painted signs were all the rage in tavern culture.
But in Kindi, it wasn't just branding, it was still the community's meeting place.
In January 1972, a woman named Lynette Han took over operations.
Known as tough, fair, and funny, Lynette ran the wagon wheel for over a decade.

(04:31):
Those remember her behind the bar, telling stories, pouring drinks, running a tight kitchen,
fish fries on Fridays, homemade chili in winter, and cold beer all year round.
This was no roadside chain.
This was a true small town in, with creaky floors upstairs, painted walls from another era,
and regulars who'd been coming in since before the Clancy name even went up.

(04:52):
We'll be right back after this message.
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From ghost towns and shipwrecks to lost resorts and back-road legends, we cover the stories
that make this region unforgettable.
Head to Michigan4U.com and start your next deep dive into the places and people that shaped

(05:14):
the mitten.
That's Michigan4U.com, where Michigan stories come alive.
Welcome back.
Let's continue.
By the 1980s, change came again.
The rail depot was long gone.
Highways had pulled traffic away from the village.
And small town hotels were giving way to motels, diners, and convenience stores.
Eventually, the wagon wheel closed, the rooms upstairs went dark, the neon beer signs flickered

(05:38):
out.
But the buildings stood for a while longer, a brick landmark with a wooden soul.
Locals driving by knew what it once was.
They remembered stories from their grandparents about dances, drinks, elopements, and Saturday
nights that turned into Sunday mornings.
And then, sometime after 2018, it was gone, demolished, a whole-ware history once stood.

(06:00):
But the legacy, that hasn't gone anywhere.
The Grand Central Hotel Kindi was more than a building.
It was a traveler stop, a bar stool confessional, a witness to Michigan's shifting identity.
It bridged the lumber boom in the farm belt, trains and trucks, telegrams and phone lines.
It changed names but never lost its purpose, to be a place where people gathered.

(06:20):
If you drive through Kindi today, the hotel is gone, but stand on the corner of Main Street,
close your eyes, and you might still hear the echo, boots on the porch, a screen door slamming,
the home of conversation over a clinking glass.
Thanks for joining me for this episode of End of the Road in Michigan.
If you enjoyed it, follow, leave a review, and share it with someone who loves hometown

(06:41):
history.
And if you've got photos, memories, or stories about the Grand Central, clansies, or the
wagon wheel, we want to hear them.
of the road in Michigan, where forgotten stories still matter.