At that time Grand Rapids wasn’t a safe place for gay people. Back then, he was living near Grand Rapids with his wife and kids. Once Ox-Bow was established, the artsy community and Chicago urbanities were traveling to Saugatuck-Douglas and more gay people started hanging out at the dunes.Ĭarl Jennings started coming to the area in the 1960s. “A lot of people who attended Ox-Bow, a lot of the creative types maybe were gay men and women,” Schreur says.
We don’t know if those naked men were necessarily gay, but Schreur says the gay population did start to take off around 1910 when the Art Institute of Chicago opened up a summer program in Saugatuck, called Ox-Bow.
