Museum - The Lure of Leisure: Lakes,
Sports and Theaters

The Museum at Southwestern Michigan College's latest local history exhibit explores the area’s entertainment and recreation history, including theaters, lakes and resorts, schools (music and sports), fairs and parades, baseball and the fire department, which in the 19th century hosted gala events and contests.

Visitors will see exhibits with rare artifacts from the Beckwith Theater, fire department pieces including a turn-of-the-century fire hose cart from Round Oak, old baseball uniforms and other great artifacts.

The Lure of Leisure includes a miniature Beckwith theater in which visitors can watch 1930s and 1940s video of Dowagiac and Cassopolis. The exhibit includes an interactive fishing hole in which visitors can catch "fish" typical of the area’s lakes.

A third interactive area has visitors pumping a circa 1860s-style hand-pump fire engine to see how much pressure they can create that would determine how far water would shoot from a hose.