St. Joseph and Benton Harbor, Michigan

St. Joseph and Benton Harbor, Michigan sit side by side on Lake Michigan, connected by a river crossing and a shared history shaped by water, industry, and reinvention. In this episode, John McGivern explores both “twin cities,” starting in St. Joseph—about 90 miles from Chicago and about 50 miles from Kalamazoo—where the shoreline and port history helped bring goods out and visitors in.

The episode visits Silver Beach and looks back to the days when an amusement park filled the beachfront, then heads downtown to G&M Variety Store, an “almost everything” shop known for puzzles, throwback sodas, and a small-town retail feel that fits a seasonal community. St. Joseph’s paired lighthouses come with a practical lesson, too: line up the lights and you know you’re on track heading toward the river, with a catwalk built so keepers could move safely between structures.

Across the river, Benton Harbor stories center on adaptive reuse and community spaces, from the Box Factory for the Arts to Water Street Glassworks, where a teen program called Fired Up teaches glass art for free. The episode also steps into the history of the Israelite House of David commune and closes by noting two 2024 Martin Luther King Jr. statues—one in each city—marking shared values in two distinct places.