Tagged: grand hotel

MACKINAC ISLAND, Mich. (AP) - The owner of Michigan's most famous summer hotel has died. R.D. "Dan" Musser Jr. was 80.

Musser owned the Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island. In a statement, the hotel says he died Saturday of congestive health failure at a Lansing hospital.

Musser started working at the hotel when he was in college in 1951. It was owned at the time by his uncle, W. Stewart Woodfill. Musser became president in 1960 and purchased the hotel, with wife Amelia, in 1979.

The Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island, where Mark Twain once lectured, five U.S. presidents have stayed, and a place that has been named a National Historic Landmark, is celebrating its 125th anniversary this year.

The hotel opened for the first time in 1887, and it starts this year's season today with a series of special events marking the milestone.

In July, the AP reports there will be a party with a 125-foot birthday cake for guests to enjoy (I'm guessing that's not 125 feet tall).

Here's a grand ole' 1944 Metro Goldwyn Mayer video on Mackinac Island in which narrator James Fitzpatrick calls the Grand Hotel "that romantic institution justifiably called the grandest of grand hotels."