Text written by Kit Lane for the 2009 Summertime exhibit: The route labeled U. S. 31 has been in West Michigan since the government first began route labeling, where did it go before the Blue Star Highway, still often called “Old 31,” was built? Right through the middle of the business districts of both Saugatuck and Douglas. To understand the roads of the area prior to 1936 you need to erase from your mind) both I-196 and the Blue Star Memorial Highway (A2). Both are at least partially diagonal roads which cut across the traditional grid system. When the Blue Star Highway was proposed in 1936, taking away the U. S. 31 route signs, the business people of Saugatuck wrote a letter to the editor which wailed, “We know that next year our summer traffic will be using the new highway instead of coming into the village. Well, what are we going to do about it?” Nothing was accomplished but some gnashing of teeth and, except for a few motels, which there was no room to build in the village limits anyway, little was built on the highway to draw business away from the villages, although Saugatuck fared better than Douglas. In 1965 when I-196 was proposed to receive the U. S. 31, designation, highway officials promised the villages that there would be an exit for Douglas on Wiley Road (130th Avenue) and a Saugatuck exit on Old Allegan Road – but both of these were eliminated to cut costs and the isolation that had been feared has proven beneficial to both villages.

Text written by Kit Lane for the 2009 Summertime exhibit Does the Saugatuck traffic light ever turn green? For the first time it did not in 2010. Before 1960 Saugatuck’s sole traffic light was shut off completely at Labor Day and, to better protect it from winter weather, it was wrapped in the raincoat belonging to the Chief of Police, who also retired for the winter. In more recent years the light was set to blink all winter and turned to red-yellow-green mode in May. In the spring of 2010 officials decided that it would better serve the purposes of summertime traffic if it continued to blink. Residents were disappointed because that cancelled the annual spring ceremony where on-lookers and the high school band would gather at the corner to mark the arrival of “the season”. The mayor, with the help of the Department of Public Works, would officially switch over to red-yellow-green operation – and all would cheer. [According to Judy Anthrop, the first car to blow through the switched traffic light (because the driver assumed the light was still in blink mode) would be chased down by the crowd and given a "Citizen of the Light" certificate.] Douglas also has one traffic light at the corner of Center Street and the Blue Star Highway but it operates fully the year around, except that it switches to blinker operation after 11 p.m. The newest area traffic light was installed about five years ago in Saugatuck Township at the corner of 64th Street west and the Blue Star Highway just south of Exit 41 on Interstate-196. That light remains green for the highway traffic until vehicles on 64th Street trigger its operation.