Forgotten Places Archives - Page 17 of 25

The Mystery House

Posted on October 2, 2019 by Mike Sonnenberg Posted in Forgotten Places, Houses .

I was going through some of my old galleries and I came across this old forgotten house. I can’t remember even taking this photo let alone where it is located. It was in a gallery of photos from the Leelanau Peninsula so I am assuming the old house is located somewhere in the peninsula. Oh well, maybe I will discover it again on another trip.

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The Revelation Inside the Old Mill

Posted on September 6, 2019 by Mike Sonnenberg Posted in Forgotten Places, Grain Elevators .

North of Glen Arbor in the Leelanau Penisula is an old grist mill that sits along the Crystal River. It looks like many other hundred-year-old mills used for grinding grain, but this one has a unique story to tell. Long after it stopped grinding grain into flour during the 1970s it was turned into a world-class recording studio. You would have never guessed it from driving past this old forgotten structure. I just assumed it was and always has been a mill, but besides grinding flour it was cranking ou the tunes.

It was going to be turned into an arts and crafts center, but the plans fell through and architect Fred Ball ended up with the building. He decided to turn it into a recording studio calling it the Glen Arbor Roller Mills Recording Studio. He spared no expense purchasing state of the art 16 track quadraphonic soundboard and the latest equipment. Acclaimed audio engineer Bill Porter, who was instrumental in shaping the “Nashville Sound” and worked with Elvis along with other big named artist learned about the project. Porter helped with getting the studio set up and had engineer George Augspurger who worked on Los Angeles’s Village Recorder Studios help with the new studio in Glen Arbor.

I could find a lot of information about the equipment in the studio, but what I could not find is a list or any artists that recorded in the historic old mill. I imagine being secluded in northern Michigan in the 1970s it was difficult for artists to travel to it and had a relatively short life as a recording studio. A small sign is posted on the mill’s porch for a nearby resort called the Homestead, so I assume they own the historic building and have plans for the future, but I am thinking it will probably not be a recording studio.

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Zeba Mystery Church

Posted on July 21, 2019 by Mike Sonnenberg Posted in Churches, Forgotten Places, upper peninsula .

Not far from the town of L’anse is the small town of Zeba and close by is this little church. It stands along the shoreline of Lake Superior’s L’anse Bay Lake Superior. I am sure it was a church with the cross proudly mounted to the top of the steeple. Other than that I don’t know anything about it. I can only imagine it has seen some beautiful sunsets over the bay and some ferocious winter snowstorms all while holding services inside for funerals, weddings, and baptisms.

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Camp Sidnaw

Posted on July 18, 2019 by Mike Sonnenberg Posted in Forgotten Places, upper peninsula .

The small town of Sidnaw in the central-western Upper Peninsula was home to one of several POW camps throughout Michigan. The camp was originally built as a CCC camp and after the capture of thousands of German soldiers in Africa, they were sent to the United States to be held as POWs.

Because of the large number of American men serving in the war the lumber industry requested POW’s be used to help with the labor shortage. 251 Germans were held in Sidnaw from February of 1944 until April of 1946. The camp did not have a fence around it just a couple of guard towers to watch the prisoners. It was not much of an issue. Most prisoners were young men who were drafted into the Nazi Army and would rather work in the sawmills than be shot at by the allied troops. One issue that did have was with the conservation officers who complained about the guards using machine guns and hand grenades to hunt deer while they POWs were out logging. The U.S. government sent limited supplies to the camp and some fresh venison was a welcomed meal.

Nothing from the camp remains. The guard towers stood for a long time, but they are gone now. I saw this old shack next to the tracks in town, and I can only imagine this little building saw many trains pulling in and out of town with POWs and supplies.

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Near Brimley is the remains of another former POW facility called Camp Raco, you can read my post about it HERE

If you want to know more about the POW camps in Michigan I highly recommend reading the book by Gregory D. Sumner titled Michigan POW Camps in World War II. It was compelling to read, I did not know so many POWs were sent to Michigan to work in the fields and forests. You can check out his book on Amazon HERE

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Bessemer Building

Posted on June 21, 2019 by Mike Sonnenberg Posted in Forgotten Places .

I saw this old building north of Bessemer in da U.P. It looks like it may have been a schoolhouse at one time but I don’t know. I come across many old buildings especially in the Upper Peninsula that I wonder about.

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Michigan’s Forgotten Fort

Posted on June 13, 2019 by Mike Sonnenberg Posted in Forgotten Places .

Long before the Mackinaw Bridge, expressways, wineries, and craft breweries, tourist destinations were a lot different. They were more like roadside oddities and strange-looking places to attract motorists. One of the earliest tourist attractions in the Upper Peninsula was Fort Algonquin north of St. Ignace. The fort was built by Vaughan Norton in the 1920s to look like an old fort from Michigan’s fur trading days. He also purchased Castle Rock, but sold it during the Great Depression. He entertained tourists for decades displaying his Native American artifacts and selling trinkets to tourists.

An old postcard of the fort

The old fort sits on the Mackinac Trail north of St Ignace and because of its location away from town, it is mostly forgotten. It’s no longer open but the fort style structure is still standing. I drove past it and wondered what it was and found their facebook page HERE

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The Lonely Log Cabin

Posted on May 29, 2019 by Mike Sonnenberg Posted in Forgotten Places, Houses .

I saw this lonely log cabin near Lewiston in the northern Lower Peninsula. I wish I had a story to go along with it but I don’t I thought it looked interesting like it has been standing for a long time. Who knows, maybe Paul Bunyon visited it, I doubt it but unfortunately, walls can’t talk.

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The Bizarre Ruins in Freda

Posted on May 15, 2019 by Mike Sonnenberg Posted in Forgotten Places, upper peninsula .

Along the shoreline of Lake Superior are a tall smokestack and concrete ruins. It is near the town of Freda west of Houghton in the Keweenaw Peninsula. The maze of weathered concrete and rusty rebar is what remains of the Champion Mill that processed the copper-rich rocks. Trains would pull into the mill and dump their cars filled with copper infused rocks. The mill would pulverize the rocks and mix them with water from lake superior creating a sludge rich in copper. It was then taken by train to Houghton for further processing and then poured into ingots and shipped around the world.

The mill closed in 1967 and it was stripped of any metal for scrap. I made the trip to see the ruins, but the road stops at a cliff that overlooks the remains. A barbed wire fence restricts people from getting to close. It was interesting to see but unfortunately, access for visitors is not allowed. It was not a wasted trip since I also stopped to see the waterfalls and old train bridge in nearby Redridge, but that is a post for another day.

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The Brick House

Posted on May 1, 2019 by Mike Sonnenberg Posted in Forgotten Places, Houses .

I saw this old brick house or whatever it was in a field northwest of Coldwater. Unfortunately, I don’t have a story to go along with it. I can only wonder what stories it could tell if walls could talk.

Since I don’t have a lot to write about in this post, I will take the time to say thank you for looking at my posts. I hope you enjoy seeing them in your email every day.

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Michigan’s Alcatraz

Posted on April 23, 2019 by Mike Sonnenberg Posted in Forgotten Places .

The unofficial motto of the U.S. Lifesaving Service was “You have to go out; you don’t have to come back.” Vermillion Point that was the most remote and desolate lifesaving station around the Great Lakes. Located on the shores of Lake Superior in Whitefish Point the station was situated between Crisp Point Lighthouse and Whitefish Point Lighthouse. The men and their families stationed in the remote outpost referred to it as the Alcatraz of the Lifesaving Service.

The station began operation in 1876 and received supplies by boat. In the wintertime, supplies were delivered by dog sled to the isolated place far from any town. The station remained in operation until 1944 when it was abandoned. The buildings were left to defend themselves from the harsh northern Michigan weather. In the early 1970s, the Vermilion Life Saving Station and the surrounding 1.5 miles undeveloped shoreline was privately purchased for preservation and restoration. Many of the buildings’ exteriors have been restored. The one in the photograph is one of the remaining buildings to be restored by the non-profit group S.O.S. Vermillion.

The property is open to the public for quiet recreation. No motorized vehicles are allowed on the preserve and the areas around piping plover nests and bird-trapping nets are restricted. It is about a 10 mile drive down sandy forest roads to reach Vermillion Point. It’s worth the trip, but I suggest doing it in the summer or fall when it is dry. The first trip I tried to make to the point the road was flooded over about a mile from the parking lot and I had to turn around.

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