Tulip Time Photo Walk by Donna Henderson/Tulip Time Festival
Holland’s Tulip Time has been an annual celebration of Dutch culture & tulips since the founding of the festival in 1929. Tulip Time returns for the 96th year May 2-11, 2025. Here are some photos from recent years (and one throwback) via the Tulip Time Facebook.
Heated Sidewalk in Holland by Discover Holland
One of the stories you read more & more every year is how online shopping is killing downtowns. Discover Holland shares that in the 80s when suburban malls were wreaking similar havoc, downtown Holland business owners & the city created a plan for Snow Free Holland, now the largest municipal snowmelt system in North America:
Joining the conversation was Holland native and Prince Corporation founder, Edgar D. Prince. Prince brought to the table an idea that he discovered while in Europe, a system of underground piping that circulates warm water to keep the snow and ice at bay during the winter months. Using this idea, Prince expanded on the possibilities of snow and ice free access in downtown, and thus began the downtown Holland snowmelt project.
Currently, snowmelt is maintained by the Holland Board of Public Works in collaboration with the Holland Energy Park. Snowmelt was first implemented in 1988 and is the largest municipally-run snowmelt system in North America. By using waste heat from power generation, water is heated and circulated through 120 miles of plastic tubing underneath the streets and sidewalks. The tubes are 3/4″ in circumference; Holland has 600,000 square feet of tubing totaling 4.9 miles and 10.5 acres of heated streets and sidewalks. With the water heating up to 95 degrees Fahrenheit, the system can melt 1″ of snow per hour – even at 20 degrees F with 10 MPH winds!
More from Discover Holland & a big thanks to Mike Karl who shared one of these pics the other day!
The Winning Tulip by Measie Elizabeth
It’s almost Tulip Time, (May 4-12, 2024) and Discover Holland is once again inviting anyone with a passion for petals to take part in their 2025 Holland Area Visitor’s Guide Cover Contest. They say that the cover shot must be taken in 2024 and stand out when surrounded by other brochures. Photos must be vertical (portrait) in orientation or be able to be cropped as such. The winning photographer gets a $500 cash prize and photo credit when it’s used editorially. The top ten photos each get $50 and the winner of the “People’s Choice” vote online will receive $150.
This photo by Measie Elizabeth was the winner last year. Learn more about the photographer at Measie Elizabeth Photography.
Holland’s annual Tulip Time Festival starts this Saturday and runs May 7-15, 2022. Tulip Time is the oldest tulip festival in North America that started in in 1929 when the City of Holland planted its first crop of 100,000 tulips, and it has continued to grow with national entertainment acts and events & activities for all ages.
The Tulip Time Festival shared this awesome photo from the 1950s, a perfect Throwback Thursday! Head over to their Facebook Page for more!
More tulips & Tulip Time on Michigan in Pictures.
Valentines Skies #2 by Gary Brink Photography
Gary took this stunning shot at Holland’s “Big Red” lighthouse on Valentine’s Day back in 2017. Head over to his Flickr for the latest & I hope that you all have a lovely week!
The Great Lakes Echo shares that Holland ranks first in quality of life for Michigan small cities:
This small city nestled off Lake Michigan ranks number one in the state for quality of life in “Best Small Cities in America,” a study published by WalletHub, a personal finance website that tracks financial and other trends. It is one of five measures the study used to rank the desirability of small cities. (The other measures are affordability, economic health, education and health, and safety.)
Quality of life was assessed by measures like average commute time, city walkability and number of bars, restaurants and cultural centers per capita.
Holland, Kalamazoo, Flint, Muskegon and Saginaw ranked in the top five of 39 small Michigan cities for the quality-of-life measure. The state’s lowest were Holt, Eastpointe, St. Clair Shores, Lincoln Park and Garden City.
You can read more in the Echo & see all the cities in the study at WalletHub. Also, Traverse City, Marquette, Petoskey – you weren’t in the study so continue thinking whatever you think about yourselves.
In all seriousness, “studies” like this are basically nonsense, but I’ll take any excuse for a banger photo of Big Red like this one! Ayman took this pic back in 2019. See more in their Lighthouses gallery on Flickr.
Lots more about Holland Michigan on Michigan in Pictures!
Blue Skies, White Sails, and Big Red by Bill Johnson
Reaching back to September of 2013 for this tasty shot of a sailboat gliding past the Big Red Lighthouse in Holland. See more in his awesome Lighthouses album on Flickr!
Sunset at the Beach by charles hildebrandt
West Michigan Fox-17 reports that the longest heatwave in West Michigan history possible in the coming weeks:
High temperatures will begin to rise to around or above 90° and will not fall below that point for at least a week. This long stretch of 90s could stretch into the second week of July, which would put us in the territory of longest heatwave since records began back in 1892.
A heatwave is 3 or more days in a row of 90°+ and we have had several of the shorter versions. The difference with this one in particular is it will last a week or even two as no system will swing through to cool us off.
A very strong ridge of high pressure across the country will set us up for the extensive heat. This will also keep rain chance minimal, as this ridge keeps air from rising and also dries the air out.
One good piece of news is that the majority of the heatwave will have manageable humidity. It will be a dry heat, just like the desert southwest.
Charles took this 10 years ago at Ottawa Beach in Holland. See more on his Flickr & stay cool everyone!
“The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was written solely to pleasure the children of to-day. It aspires to being a modernized fairy tale, in which the wonderment and joy are retained and heart-aches and nightmares are left out.”
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
L. Frank Baum, 1900
L. Frank Baum was born 144 years ago today, and this Sunday marks the 110th anniversary of the publication of his classic fairy tale, the Wonderful Wizard of Oz. The Holland Sentinel’s excellent article L. Frank Baum and the Macatawa Goose Man: Celebrating the origins of “The Wizard of Oz” explores the author’s connection to West Michigan, saying in part:
He was named after his uncle, Lyman Spalding Baum, but never liked Lyman and always was known as Frank to family and friends. As an actor and playwright, he was Louis F. Baum. As a newspaper editor, L.F. Baum, and as the children’s book author most famously known for “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz,” he was known as L. Frank Baum. But to the folks in Macatawa, he was simply known as “The Goose Man.”
…In 1899, Baum published “Father Goose: His Book.” The collection of children’s poems exploded in popularity and provided Baum with wealth and prestige for the first time in his life, his great-grandson, Bob Baum, recalled.
The author used the profits from his book to rent a large, multi-story Victorian summer home nestled on the southern end of the Macatawa peninsula on Lake Michigan. The home, which he eventually purchased, came to be known as the Sign of the Goose, an ever-present reminder of the fame that came along with “Father Goose.”
“The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” supposedly was written in Chicago, but some of the forest scenes look just like the pathways that run through the dunes, the younger Baum said.
He assumes Macatawa was where part of the book had been worked on or written, as Baum might have found inspiration from the castle in Castle Park for the yellow brick road, some say, or even based some of the characters in the book on personalities he encountered in the small lakeshore community.
“Especially in the Oz stories, a lot of characters and situations that we may not recognize … he drew lots of inspiration from Macatawa for the book.”
According to an undated newspaper article detailing one reporter’s visit to the Sign of the Goose, Baum not only was popular and well-known among the adults in the area, but children were quite fond of him as he allowed them into his home to read fairy tales, which occupied one of the shelves of his large bookcase.
The Holland Oz Project launched last summer with the installation of this floral living mosaic book, a yellow brick road, and colorful landscaping in Centennial Park with bronze sculptures on the grounds of the Herrick Library across the street. A funding campaign to support the project uses personalized engraved yellow bricks for placement along the yellow brick road.
To learn more about the Oz Project, visit their website or call the Holland Area Visitors Bureau at 616.394.0000.
You can see more in Erik’s Holland 2019 gallery on Flickr.
Home Before the Squall, photo by Julie Mansour
Thinking there’s been a lot of rain lately? You’re not wrong! Michigan has experienced a lot of rain over the last few weeks, and mLive meteorologist Mark Torregrossa shares that there are three weather conditions all combining over the Great Lakes that keep the rain machine running:
Over the next 10 days there should be three weather systems moving through the Great Lakes region. Each of these storms should have one to two inches of rain in the heaviest swath of precipitation.
The cause of the wet weather starts with numerous storm systems being born over the northern Pacific Ocean. These storms are hitting the Pacific Northwest coast every three to five days. The storm systems then cross the hotter than average Rockies and drop south into the base of a “U”-shaped bend in the jetstream. This U-shaped area is where storms spin faster and intensify. It’s the area along the jetstream where large-scale weather systems are at their strongest.
The final part to this wet weather scenario is what we call a “wide-open Gulf of Mexico.” Southern winds from the Gulf of Mexico into the Midwest and Ohio Valley bring high amounts of water vapor northward. The strong storm systems use that water vapor to produce heavy rain.
…The total rainfall forecast over the next week, through July 4, 2017 shows NOAA forecasters expect a swath of five to six inch total rain. We will just have to watch where this heaviest rain sets up. Right now it is expected to fall south of the flooded areas in Michigan. It could easily shift north or south a few hundred miles.
Julie caught the Neptune beating the rain in Holland last weekend. View her photo background bigtacular and see more in her slideshow.
Michigan in Pictures 