The Rainbow Inn

The Rainbow Inn was founded and built by William T. West of Columbus, OH. West worked for the PA Railroad system. The 1950s and 1960s era of the northwest Lower Peninsula of Michigan was a time period of expanding summer resort tourism. One of the top summer resort towns in the northern Michigan area, known as the "Tip of the Mitt," was Petoskey. The small city of 5,000 people was located on the eastern and southern shoreline of Little Traverse Bay, Lake Michigan. It was the first northern Lake Michigan town to draw a summer clientele of Midwestern city dwellers beginning in 1875. The Grand Rapids and Indiana Railroad had laid its rails northward and needed to fill its passenger cars with…

On March 9, 1965, the Rainbow Inn was totally destroyed by a kitchen stove fire that was too far gone to be put out by arriving firemen. The hotel structure at 1630 Clarion Avenue had been constructed in the late 1880s almost entirely of wood. It was originally built as the mansion for the Fredrick Bauerle family, a wealthy wooden ware factory owner in Petoskey. Over the years the three-story building had undergone many renovations which eventually had helped turn it into the Rainbow Inn after purchase by the Wests. Only a few months earlier the United States Congress had passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which outlawed discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national…