Ask anyone from Gen Z how to get to Pine Lake in Lansing and you’ll probably get blank stares, a lot of “I dunnos”, and “there ain’t no Pine Lake in Lansing” remarks. Those are dead giveaways of either those too young or newbies to the area.
Pine Lake still exists – it’s just now known as Lake Lansing…..it was also once the name of what is now the town of Haslett.
Haslett’s beginnings go back to the 1840s when the swamps of Pine Lake were inhabited by 35 farmer families and a one-room schoolhouse. In 1879 it became a postal station under the name “Pine Lake P.O.”. That same year, Lansing’s urban trolley system began bringing people out to Pine Lake for recreation.
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Pine Lake was also a Spiritualist camp founded by James Haslett. Around the first day of fall in 1890, it was re-named Haslett Park; five years later, the “Park” was dropped and it was known as just ‘Haslett’ from then on, which became the name of the village nearby…