The Vonnegut House Guide to Vacation Renting on Lake Maxinkuckee
While The Vonnegut House would always like to be your first choice, and we are partial, there are a lot of neat places to stay on Lake Maxinkuckee, in Culver, Indiana.
Today there are approximately 300 homes on the lake, approximately 103 on the East Shore, 20 in Venetian Village, 59 on the South Shore, and 113 on the West Shore, and at least as many again within a 2 minute walk of the lake. There also are a few condominium units on the north and west side of the lake that offer lake front views and lake access.
Of all these, perhaps about 10% are available for rental on any given summer week. That gives you maybe 30-60 options!
Ways to Rent on Lake Max
Click on any of the links below to decide if a place is right for you, and contact the rental agent or owner.
Charmers on the Lake: The Grand Old Homes of Lake Max
The Clemens Vonnegut Jr. House
Queen of the Lake If you can book it, this place has earned its name.
Hendricks-Hollowell House, AKA Cole Porter House
Lake Max Regular Vacation Rental Homes:
These are nice homes, not necessarily of any historical significance, on or near Lake Max, marketed by a handful or reputable local companies.
Culver Lakes Realty AKA Aloha Realty
Culver Rentals AKA Pam Baker Rentals
These National companies also have a nice selection of rentals, although it might take you back to the inventories of the companies above. Some people like dealing directly with the management company or owner, some like the comfort of a middle man.
VRBO culver (Vacation Rental by Owner )
Home Away Culver
If VRBO and home away seem similar, they both belong to expedia. Home Away is geared towards slightly longer stays, and has lower commissions.
US Lakes focuses on lake homes
Condominums on Lake Max:
Culver Cove While part of us wishes Culver Cove wasn’t built, since it blocks off downtown from the lake, part of us actually has good memories of the place, and finds it to be pretty relaxing to stay there.
There are a small handful of other condos on the lake that might be for rent, but the majority of the lake was settled as individual houses except in the town of culver, and a few just off the lake on the West Shore.
Other unique vacation rentals near Lake Max:
The Culver Cottage AKA Main Street Manor
The North Shore is dominated by three main features, Culver Academies, The Indian Path Woods belonging to The Academies, which are preserved as a woodland, and the town and its Lakeside Park. There are a few cottages with access to the park and the lake in town, but you have to cross a road, although village living has it’s charms.
If you are looking for grand old homes, reflective of 130 years of summer retreat culture, to rent for a family getaway or event, the East Shore possesses the bulk of them.
If you are looking for a condo or a bit of neighborhood and community feel, that is mostly found on the North West corner of the lake, although the East Shore is inviting in its own right, this is Indiana, not Saint Tropez, although you’d be permitted to make that mistake.
Wedding Venues:
The Clemens Vonnegut Jr. House
Meeting Spaces:
The Clemens Vonnegut Jr. House
Bass Lake:
While Lake Max is the playground of the Indianapolis Jet Set, Bass Lake in Starke County, 20 minutes to the West, with it’s lovely active Drive In Theater and well reputed Bar B Q, is a similar playground for the hard working people of Chicagoland.
If Lake Max isn’t working for you, Bass Lake might.
Chain of Lakes:
There is a line of smaller lakes, almost ponds, to the north of culver running between it and the County Hub of Plymouth Indiana. They do have charm, but they are more year round places to live than the vibrancy of Lake Max. Many people who live and work in the Plymouth area have their homes on the Chain of Lakes.
Lake Wawasee:
While we prefer Lake Maxinkuckee for obvious reasons, the other surviving big nautral lake in Indiana is Lake Wawasee, about an hour east near the town of Syracuse, Indiana. While we can’t argue it’s a nice place, and the lake is certainly bigger, some 10 times bigger, there is sometimes a charm in not being the biggest, and Lake Max enacts that charm well, still feels small town. Lake Max is a little deeper, it’s fair to say.
However, if there was one place we’d dream of staying on Wawasee, it would be the old Spinks Hotel where Al Capone is reputed to have stayed, but it’s condos now sadly.
‘Lake Max’ as it’s known, is the southernmost natural Lake in Indiana, due to the glaciation from the Ice Age, which gave the midwest its generally flat appearance down to about the east-west line of I-70, cutting through cities like Indianapolis, Columbus and St. Louis. If you notice, when you get south of there, you get into more hilly country almost down to the Gulf Of Mexico. All lakes south of here are artificial as they say, man made lakes by usually cement dams. There is nothing like the spring fed waters of the real thing.
According to Wikipedia, Maxinkuckee means ‘Big Stone Country’, for the glacial erratics and fieldstone that the glaciers brought down from the north with them into Limestone country.
While the first European settlers trickled into the area after the removal of the Potawatomi to Oklahoma in the 1830’s, there was a period of quiet for many decades as nature retook the lake, but the settlers were busy, and a town called Marmont, later to be renamed Culver, grew up on the northwest corner of the lake, and a smattering of hunting camps and cabins began to occupy the shores of the lake.
The railroad came to the Marshall County Seat of Plymouth, Indiana in 1856, but it wasn’t until 1884 that the Vandalia Railroad connected Lake Max to the population centers of Chicago and Indianapolis, and smaller cities like Logansport and Peru, opening up Marmont and Lake Max to people seeking temporary or permanent refuge from the same urban centers. You can still see the grade running along the west shore of the lake, through town, and on up to Hibbard.
In the late 1880’s, people spread all over the lake by foot and boat looking for their sanctuary. While the west shore offered convenience to town and the tracks, the east shore offered sunset views, bluffs in places to put one into the prevailing westerly winds for cooling on hot summer days, and a bit of wilderness.
Famed author Kurt Vonnegut Jr. called Lake Max his Aegean Sea, from which he made his map of the world. We hope you will find it as appealing and relaxing as he did, a place to ponder the world on the shores of a lake in the presence of a good community.
Sunset at The Vonnegut House Pier on Lake Maxinkuckee in 2013 Photo Courtesy Garth Kiser