The Lakeside Experience

It's called the Lakeside experience. In a world where everything seems to be going at hyper-speed, you can step back in time at Lakeside along the shores of Lake Erie. Values and traditions are the heart of this community. Lakeside is located on the Marblehead Peninsula, halfway between Toledo & Cleveland.

ABOVE: Grindley Aquatic & Wellness Campus

Lakeside began as a small tract of cleared land, a campsite where Christian revivals often took place. The deed to part of what is now Lakeside was purchased by the Central Ohio Conference of the Methodist Church. Financial backers and organizers included Rev. Richard P. Duvall, who at one time had done missionary work for relocated Sac and Fox Indians in Oklahoma; B. H. Jacobs, a Danish immigrant who owned a store in nearby Port Clinton and who was a Civil War veteran; and Samuel R. Gill, twenty-seven years of age, who had grown up on the Marblehead peninsula.

Lakeside Chautauqua is a place of rest and renewal, built upon the Chautauqua Movement's four supporting pillars: religion, education, cultural arts, and recreation. A mix that is just as important today as it was back in the late 1800s.

Today's Lakeside visitors are only visitors once: after that they are like family and it feels like coming home.

Lakeside is a gated community from the end of May through Labor Day. To enter Lakeside during the summer season, a gate fee is charged for both cottage owners and guests. These fees support maintenance and improvements in town, as well as the many educational programs, entertainment, and instruction. Activities that are provided as part of the gate fee include nightly entertainment acts, sport and water sport activities, as well as Christian-themed activities and worship, in keeping with the area's history. There is a program every night in the spacious Hoover Auditorium, 24 professional quality shuffleboard courts, 9 tennis courts, and all kinds of children's activities. The summer calendar includes some activities for which there is an extra charge, such as miniature golf, movies at the Orchestra Hall Theatre, and an historical tour of homes.

ABOVE PHOTO: Grindley Aquatic & Wellness Campus

Lakeside also has a large pier jutting into Lake Erie, which offers fishing and swimming. In the late 1800s the pier was the main entry for 1000s of guests arriving by steamer every week. Although the pier has been reconstructed multiple times since those days, it still represents a direct link to the community's historic past where folks still gather to watch some really epic sunsets.

Lakeside also features a handful of unique stores. Additionally, the dining opportunities in the area are varied, including numerous types of cuisine and a variety of settings. There is a dining room in the Hotel Lakeside as well.

LAKEFRONT PHOTO BY: Lakeside Chautauqua

Ohio's Most Beautiful Mile

In true Lakeside fashion, Ohio’s Most Beautiful Mile is where the beauty of nature and the charm of good company come together. It begins on the east side of Lakeside with the Gundlach Garden’s towering gladioli, and stretches to the west side where benches for peaceful reading scatter the lawn of Perry Park. Also along this stretch of the southern Lake Erie shoreline sits the iconic

GUNDLACH GARDEN PHOTO BY: Alexandrea Stelzer

Lakeside Pavilion and Dock, a place for sunsets, swimming and social time. If you walk past the tree-filled Central Park on a summer Sunday evening, you’re sure to hear music floating from the Steele Memorial Bandstand/Gazebo, a place that also serves as an educational venue, a wedding altar or a breezy place to listen to the waves.

Lakeside Shuffleboard

In 2012, Steve Hartman of CBS news, narrated a segment on his "Assignment America" about playing shuffleboard at Lakeside which suddenly put Lakeside's shuffleboard courts on the nation's radar. But for anyone that has played shuffleboard at Lakeside, that would be almost an oxymoron. Shuffleboard and Lakeside go together like waffle cones and ice cream. In Hartman's story, he made it a point of noting that at least 99 percent of the kids at Lakeside play shuffleboard, and are quite good at it. In fact, Steve Hartman was one of those kids back in 1973 where he was the 12 and under champion.

Shuffleboard has been a part of the Lakeside psyche since 1928, which is proudly displayed on a large sign at the shuffleboard clubhouse. Lakeside plays host to a number of National Shuffleboard Tournaments in July.

Grindley Aquatic & Wellness Campus

In 2017 the Grindley Aquatic & Wellness Campus opened to Lakeside Chautaqua guests when the new pool opened. The Wellness Center is expected to open before the 2018 Memorial Day opening ceremonies.

Lakeside Daisy Festival

On the Marblehead Peninsula a 19-acre nature preserve was created on the old limestone quarry to protect and save the endangered flower called the Lakeside Daisy. The Lakeside Daisy is a bright yellow wildflower found only in this area of Ohio and a couple of spots in Ontario Canada.

Every May, when the Lakeside Daisy blooms, the village of Marblehead celebrates the flower by hosting a festival known as Lakeside Daisy Day.

The Lakeside Daisy is a perennial flower that grows where few others can, on nearly barren limestone bedrock in full sunlight. In early to mid-May, the bright yellow flowers of the Lakeside daisy adorn the otherwise bleak, sun-baked landscape of the Marblehead Quarry. Each basal rosette of leaves usually produces a single 6" - 11" tall, leafless, erect stalk topped with a solitary flower.

The Festival is typically held the 2nd weekend of May.

Recently, in Columbus at the Governor's Mansion in Bexley, a large slab of Marblehead limestone was installed in the garden along with enough soil to support the Lakeside Daisy. Today, that garden is one of the few places other than Marblehead where the Lakeside Daisy can be found growing.