A  while ago I posted about a big old forgotten building I saw in the secluded town of Idlewild HERE Someone posted in the comments that it was the old Casa Blanca Hotel. I did a little digging around on the internets and found an old photo of the hotel.

Judging from the cars I am guessing this pic was from the late 40s or early 50s. It is so strange to look at this photo and see the building without the enormous tall pine trees. It looks like they had planted some small pine trees for landscaping and over three-quarters of a century those little trees grew up.

Idlewild was a thriving resort community for African Americans with places like the Flamingo Club which you can read about in my post HERE

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These deteriorating brick walls not far from Lake Michigan are slowly crumbling, but a reminder of Michigan’s past. They are the ruins of the Frankfort Iron Works built in 1870 that smelted iron ore mined from the Escanaba region in the Upper Peninsula. They are named the Frankfort Ironworks but they are actually in Elberta on the other side of Betsie Lake across from downtown Frankfort. The workers used surrounding hardwood to fuel the furnaces, but over time they had to travel further and further into the Michigan wilderness to source the firewood. By 1883 they stopped production because of the limitations of fuel for the furnace. The railroad purchased the old ironworks and converted the grounds for use as a place to load railcars onto ferries. They also converted the buildings into shops and a roundhouse for maintaining locomotives. The marine terminal remained in operation until 1982. The grounds are now part of Elberta’s Waterfront Park.

The ruins are fenced off so you can’t walk inside them, probably because of falling bricks, but you can get rather close to the remains to view them.  I have been to Frankfort many times, but I never went around to the other side of the lake, and did not know this place existed. If you are up that way you need to take a short trip over to the park.

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If you have ever traveled north of Reed City you may have seen this old airport silently standing empty waiting for another airplane to land. Reed City is a rather large town for the area of Michigan that it is located in but the airport seems rather large for the size of the town it is located in. In the 50s Jim Miller started Miller Industries building glass and aluminum storefront for retail companies.

He decided to build a small airport to fly his customers to the mid-Michigan town of Reed City.  A few years after building the airport the land was used for Interstate 131. Miller built a new airport but decided he wanted a world-class airfield with a control tower and a large building for passengers. Miller even started his own airline. Miller Airlines flew passengers between Reed City, Grand Rapids, and Chicago.

In 1968 Jim Miller retired and sold the airport to Nartron and electronics and automotive parts manufacturer. They used the building for manufacturing and renamed the facility to Nartron Field. In the 80s they build new buildings north of the airfield and no longer use the old airport buildings. They are still owned by Nartron and closed to the public but an interesting part of aviation history.

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If you have ever hiked the trails on Aligator Hill in the Sleeping Bear Dunes you have seen these odd-looking concrete structures. They were built in the 1950’s by lumberman Pierce Stocking as kilns to make charcoal. The sawmill he set up in the area produced considerable waste that was converted to charcoal in the kilns. It was packed in bags and shipped to stores around Michigan.

The kilns are concrete ovens in which limbs, slabs, and other sawmill wast were stacked as tightly as possible. The open front was closed with concrete blocks and the wood set on fire just before the last blocks were set in place. controlling the air intake was tricky, to much air and the wood was consumed by the fire, too little air, and the fire went out. If successful, the fire burned slowly for several days. Once it was out, the charcoal was removed and spread to cool, then moved to the bagging shack.

After the timber was depleted the kilns were abandoned. They are on my list of abandoned places to visit in Michigan HERE

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I was driving through the town of Alba west of Gaylord and I came across this old wooden building. Above the front door in black letting are the words. STAR TWP. HALL. I could not find any specifics on the old building, but I like the arched roof and what people in the antique business call “patina.”

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