A hundred years of amusement park, then 40 years of quiet
For a century, Chippewa Lake was a resort town. In 1878, Edward Andrews opened a picnic ground and beach on the lake called Andrew’s Pleasure Grounds. In the 1880s, Oscar Townsend and the Cleveland, Lorain & Wheeling Railroad developed the shore as a vacation resort, and Mac Beach bought the park in 1898 and built it up. By the boom years, the park had three roller coasters, a Ferris wheel, a carousel, a Tumble Bug and a ballroom with live music. Its wooden Big Dipper coaster opened in 1925.
The park closed quietly in 1978, its centennial season, after competition from Cedar Point and Geauga Lake. The rides were left standing. Trees grew through the coaster and the Ferris wheel, the ballroom burned in 2002, and a planned hotel-and-spa redevelopment collapsed into foreclosure in 2012.
The story has turned. The Medina County Park District acquired part of the old park in 2020, and on May 15, 2026 it opened the Tumble Bug Trailhead at 5796 Longacre Lane, with parking, restrooms, a picnic shelter and a half-mile accessible loop. The Chippewa Lake Historical Society runs a museum in a park-owned house at Longacre Lane and Lake Road. A future phase will lead to the old Ferris wheel. For homeowners nearby, a public park is replacing what was a fenced, decaying ruin.
The lake and its cottages
Chippewa Lake itself is the largest natural inland lake in Ohio, according to the park district: about 330 acres, formed as glaciers retreated some 14,000 years ago. The park district runs a boat launch and a paddlecraft launch on it.
The housing around it grew out of the resort years:
- The village covers only about a quarter of a square mile.
- The median home was built in 1955, and about 36% of homes date from 1939 or earlier.
- About 97% are single-family detached houses, many of them small.
- About 20% of housing units were counted as vacant, a figure that in a lake town likely includes seasonal and part-time places.
- The median home value, as owners estimate it, is about $181,300.
Next door, the separate village of Gloria Glens Park has a similar profile: about 437 residents, a median build year of 1954, and roughly 28% of units counted as vacant.
What makes a lake cottage hard to sell
Converted cottages are charming and often tricky. The usual problems are the same ones that slow down a buyer’s mortgage:
- Additions built over decades, sometimes without permits. See selling a house with unpermitted work.
- Seasonal construction. Thin walls, crawlspaces, space heaters or a furnace sized for a smaller footprint.
- Septic and water. Small lots and older systems. The Medina County Health Department doesn’t require a septic inspection at sale, but a lender often does, and where public sewer is accessible, the house must be connected and the old septic abandoned under permit. More in selling a house with septic problems.
- Vacant stretches. A cottage empty all winter needs to be winterized and insured as vacant; see vacant house insurance in Ohio.
Selling your Chippewa Lake home
A renovated, year-round lake house can draw strong interest on the open market, and if that’s yours and you’re not rushed, listing likely pays more. For a cottage that needs work, a family place nobody uses anymore, or an estate, we can buy it as it sits, contents and all. Estates go through the Medina County Probate Court; see our Medina County page for the county rules. Bob Donahue can walk the house with you and give you a written offer.