Coyote Joe's sits on the location of Broadway Park's original dance pavilion.

Broadway Park was opened in 1936 by Adolph and Anna Skula (born in Poland and Romania, respectively). Adolph worked as a tool and die maker and operated an illegal bar during Prohibition in his first home in Shelby Township near Jewell and 24 Mile roads. He also managed a gas station and store, and he began renting after Prohibition before opening Broadway Park.
 
After selling his first home to the Danosky's, his son married into the Danosky family to Gertie Danosky, Adolph began building a new house. This house sat on the northern section of 13 acres bordered by the Clinton River's north bank east of Ryan Road between Hamlin and 22 Mile roads. Since the land consisted of flat bottomland with a channel around its perimeter, which drained into the Clinton, it was an ideal park location. The Skulas began to develop it into Broadway Park.

Using lumber he got from purchasing and tearing down old houses, Adolph built a beer garden, a closed dance pavilion with window covers and a concession building to sell pop, ice cream and chips. He later made a bar on the park grounds, securing one of the first bar licenses in Shelby Township after the repeal of Prohibition. He added 100 - 150 picnic tables and benches for picnickers and painted barrels for their trash, and Adolph added a baseball diamond for kids and adults to enjoy. Later, Adolph built an apartment in his house where the park groundskeeper would live.
Admission was originally 50 cents per car during the week (though later owners charged per person instead), and as there was no parking lot, cars parked near the picnic table they used.

On Sundays, churches, political groups, or families hosting reunions would pay $200 to rent the park. As a deputy sheriff, Adolph was able to keep the peace at picnics held at Broadway Park. His favorite activities to oversee was the Saturday night moonlight dancing, always accompanied by a 6 - 7 piece band. In the wintertime, the Skulas would gather fish with friends on the frozen Clinton River.

As with many Shelby Township parks opened in the 1920s and 1930s, the popularity of Saturday and Sunday picnics at Broadway Park began to wane after World War II with the advent of better cars and the interstate highway system. The Skulas sold Broadway Park in 1946 to Stanley and Harriet Kureaewski, who ran the park from 1946 - 1964, enlarging the original dance pavilion during that time. When the Kureaewskis sold the park in 1964, they sold it to their friends Ziggy and Phyllis Perkowski. The Perkowski's ran the park until 1982. At that point, they sold it to Norman and Rick Jocques, who began to operate the original dance pavilion as a night club instead, catering to the growing suburban population in the area.

This sale marked the end of Broadway Park's functioning as a public park and picnic area; despite going through three owners between 1936 and 1982, it had remained a public park for nearly five decades, operating largely the same during all that time. The Jocques sold their night club to Alan Trainer in 1984, and he turned it into a night club of his own, the Hayloft. Broadway Park's original dance pavilion is no longer known as the Hayloft but remains a night club, operating today as Coyote Joe's, a country music night club. 

If you would like to learn more about historic Shelby Township river parks, read Wally Doebler's "Summer Along the Clinton: A History of the Clinton River Parks."