SOUTH HAVEN – March 20, 2005, is a day many members of the Michigan Flywheelers Museum will never forget. That was when the historic Lacota Depot, located at the museum, was destroyed by an early-morning fire – a fire, the Michigan State Police fire marshal later determined was arson.

“That knocked the wind right out of our sails,” remembers Patrick Ingalls, museum president. “It was the first building that we moved to the museum for an exhibit in our Old Towne area, and to think that someone may have deliberately burned it down was devastating to us.”

It’s been five years since that tragic fire and, despite several leads, MSP detectives are not much closer to figuring out who did it or why. Anyone with any information is asked to call Trooper Paul Gonyeau at (269) 637-2125.

One popular theory is that someone broke into the 134-year-old wooden structure to get out of the cold and started a fire in the old pot belly stove, not realizing it wasn’t hooked up to the chimney.

The terminal was once the center of activity for the tiny tree-lined community of Lacota from the late 1800s to early 1900s.

Bustling with passengers waiting for a ride, sheds loaded with fresh produce scheduled for transporting and wagons full of five-gallon cans of cream heading for the nearest creamery, the 25- by 80-foot wooden building was one of many stops on the 40-mile rail which began as the Kalamazoo and South Haven Railroad in the 1860s.

The only train that ran through Van Buren County at the time, the K&SH line seemed successful at first.

But the line was in financial trouble almost from the beginning. And on July 1, 1870 – even before it was finished – the K&SH Railroad became the first subsidiary of the Michigan Central Railroad.

But the Michigan Central Railroad didn’t last long, either. Documentation on what happened next to the depot after the railroad went bankrupt remains sketchy.
While many Lacota residents agree the depot was moved to Clayt Ruell’s 100-acre farm on Phoenix Road by a team of horses and pulled on huge wooden rollers, there is wide disagreement on when.

In a newspaper article believed to be written in 1978, Butch and Sharon Gould, who purchased the depot from Ruell and turned it into a fruit market, said it was moved to the farm in the late 1930s by Daggett’s of South Haven.

John Daggett, grandson of Herbert Daggett, admitted it was possible Daggett’s moved the depot “as my grandfather was moving a lot of buildings back then.”

Others say it happened in the early to mid 1940s.

Either way, the depot ended up on C.R. 388, where it stood proudly for decades.
Then in 1995, Stevensville resident Dan Schnitta purchased the farm.

Schnitta built the 1.9-mile road race course known as Gingerman Raceway on the property.

Schnitta couldn’t decide what to do with the dilapidating depot and even considered tearing it down.

But after realizing that many local residents wanted the landmark saved, he decided to donate it to the Michigan Flywheelers Museum. Schnitta’s plan to donate it was met with much enthusiasm by museum members.

The museum immediately began to raise money for the move.

On June 26, 2003, Laraway and Sons Building and Oversize Transport Movers of Pullman pulled the structure to its new home for $6,000.

Within weeks, museum members started restoring the inside. Donations of old depot items, such as lanterns and pictures, became a common occurrence. That came to a halt two years later when the roaring blaze turned the structure into ashes.

The loss hit history buffs and others hard.