Montague Inn Bed & Breakfast

Robert Montague made his money not in sugar-beet processing itself but on its margins: according to the inn's own historical record, he developed a formula that turned a common sugar-beet by-product into hand creams and soaps, a business his family sold to the Andrew Jergens Company after his death in the early 1950s. The sugar-beet industry had transformed the Saginaw Valley's agricultural economy in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and Montague's fortune grew out of that base. The mansion he commissioned in 1929 — the year of the stock market crash, an awkward moment for conspicuous construction — is a Georgian Revival structure of more than 12,000 square feet on eight acres bordering Lake Linton. It cost $125,000 to build at the onset of the Great Depression, employed hundreds of local tradesmen over two years, and came with its secrets included: bookcases in the library open into hidden rooms that later held valuables and liquor through Prohibition and doubled as an emergency escape route.

Edwina Montague's wartime activities have become a defining part of the home's documented history. According to the inn's own historical record, she quietly brought wounded World War II soldiers home from the Potter Street rail station, drew the curtains, and nursed them herself, working around the Red Cross's strict wartime limits on bandages — an unofficial and apparently unacknowledged contribution that the inn now presents as part of its heritage narrative.

The Montague family lived in the mansion until the late 1950s. The City of Saginaw bought it in the early 1960s and ran its detective bureau and public health department from the house until 1979; after five vacant years it was sold, restored, and opened as the Montague Inn Bed and Breakfast in June 1986. Guest rooms are named for Montague family members and Saginaw figures, and the historic bar is hung with photographs of past guests including Bob Hope and Rita Moreno. The paranormal reputation developed after the conversion, with accounts appearing in regional media and on haunted-Michigan aggregator sites. The specific locations cited — the third-floor corridor and the innkeeper's quarters — suggest experiences tied to particular spaces in the building rather than the property generally.