By Laura Mazzuca Toops

From the August/September 2006 Issue

Lake Magazine covers the hottest information on the Lake Michigan area.

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You can still follow in the footsteps of those long-ago revelers — by South Shore train or by car on Highway 20 — and visit what’s left of a lakeside resort complex that once included a 2,000-capacity dance hall, a 30-room hotel, a bathhouse, weekly rental cottages and an outdoor bandstand.

Although the hotel is long gone, and RV trailers have replaced most of the quaint cottages that once hugged the shoreline of the 432-acre spring-fed lake, the dance hall where the country’s biggest dance bands once played is still there.

The trip is especially nostalgic if you’re traveling there on the South Shore, which train aficionados know as one of the country’s last interurban lines, running from Randolph Street Station in downtown Chicago to South Bend. As the train rattles through the streets of Gary, Portage, Chesterton and Michigan City — and then through rolling farmland — you only need a little imagination to travel back in time.

The Hudson Lake stop is right across Chicago Road from the lake. Crunch across the gravel parking lot and go into Luigi’s pizza parlor, which leases the space in front of the dance hall. Walk through the hallway to the back, and you’re in the Blue Lantern, with its gleaming wooden floor, arched ceiling, stage, and bank of windows overlooking the lake. Close your eyes, settle into the silence, and you can almost hear the echoes from long-ago summer nights when couples swirled to the tunes of the country’s biggest bands.

And there’s a dance in the old dame yet. Now under the ownership of Lakeside RV Resort, which controls the Hudson Lake property, the Blue Lantern is once again becoming a popular spot for area weddings and parties.

The Hudson Lake story started in the 1890s, when local entrepreneur W.J. Smith built a 30-room frame hotel across the road from the lake (a vintage business card touts “prices reasonable, special weekly rates” and “Special Sunday Dinner, 60 cents – 75 cents - $1.00”). In 1914 Smith added the dance hall, which he christened The Casino.

The ’20s roared through Hudson Lake, with dance bands playing there every night but Monday. Benny Goodman, Guy Lombardo, Ben Bernie, Paul Whiteman, Jean Goldkette, Bix Beiderbecke and Wayne King were just a few who played there.

But then came the Depression, and business dwindled. The complex changed hands several times before 1960, when a developer demolished the old hotel and the cottages and turned the site into a trailer park. The dance hall went from a roller skating rink to an auction site before finally hitting bottom as a boathouse. Salvation came in 2001, when Don and Barb Davis renovated the dance hall and opened it again for private parties.

When the property once again changed hands in 2004, rumors were flying that the dance hall would be torn down for condo development. But the RV resort’s corporate owners and manager have assured locals that the Blue Lantern’s future is safe, and are hoping that word of mouth will once again make it a go-to destination.

Chicago’s West End Jazz Band has been involved in hosting events at Hudson Lake since 2001. This fall, the band presents its “Fall Colors Train Trip to the Silent Films” on Oct. 15, at the Blue Lantern. For $65, nostalgia fans get a chartered train ride on the South Shore electric line from Chicago to Hudson Lake, an all-you-can-eat buffet, and entertainment including the band and silent film organist Dennis Scott, who will accompany the 1928 silent comedy classic, Show People, starring Marion Davies and William Haines.