Spring Fountain Park contained racetracks, military parade grounds, a toboggan slide down into the lake, a switchback railway, a cyclorama building, and much more. And the town became a Chautauqua center, featuring lectures, concerts, educational courses, and theatrical events. Some summers as many as 250,000 people came, primarily by rail, to programs that featured world-class talents such as William Jennings Bryan, Will Rogers, John Philip Sousa, the New York Philharmonic, stars of the Metropolitan Opera, and more.

In 1894 the Beyer Brothers sold their land to a group headed by Presbyterian minister Solomon Dickey, who immediately changed the name to Winona Lake. Dickey kept the Chautauqua programs going, but he began adding one week of Bible conference, then two, and finally the Bible conference eclipsed the Chautauqua programming and Winona became known as the home of the world’s largest Bible conference. In 1911 the famous “baseball evangelist,” Billy Sunday, moved to Winona Lake with his wife
and four children. Over his lifetime, Sunday spoke to more than 100 million people in his evangelistic crusades. His song leader and platform manager, Homer Rodeheaver, also moved to Winona Lake and established a gospel music publishing company that became one of the world’s largest, owning more than 6,000 copyrights of hymns and gospel songs.