Known more recently as Juddville, Judd’s Corners  a few miles north of Owosso was first settled in 1853 when Connecticut native John Judd purchased 400 acres of land encompassing this area from the Hazelton brothers, who owned much of the township. A log school was erected in 1854, where Judd’s eldest daughter, Jane, taught. Over the next two decades a thriving community developed. In 1879, Judd’s Corners received a post office. By 1881 the village had a sawmill, blacksmith shop, general store, a creamery and two churches. Population, which peaked in the mid-1880s at about 175 people, began declining by the 1900s. The school that survives today, built in 1903, was originally faced with brick. The school and the Adventist and Methodist Episcopal churches are reminders of a once-thriving community.

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I like traveling down roads that run next to a river, and while I was traveling along next to the Pine River in southern Midland county I came across what looks like an old service station. When I checked on Google maps, it had the name of Porter at that location which is the name of the township in Midland County, and according to records there was a post office located somewhere near this old gas station. Maybe this was the post office at one time, but I am not positive about that. In 1869 Lewis K. Brewer became the first postmaster after holding an election at his home to form the township. The post office operated for almost 40 years until it closed in 1907.  I guess the old farm implements and gas pump tells part of the story and the rest of the story remains lost in time.

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If you take M-123 to Tahquamenon Falls a few miles from I-75 is where the town of Allenville is or at least was. About all that remains is an old general store that stands on Brevort Lake Rd.

I have found two different origins for the name of the town. One says it was named after Allen P Hulbert the superintendent of the Martel Furnace Company that had charcoal kilns in the town. The other source is Wikipedia that said the town was named after J. Alley, head of the Alley Lumber Company and was known as Alley Town. Which is correct I am not sure but like the town, its history is slowly fading away.

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A few miles southeast of Baldwin, in the center of the Lower Peninsula, the Great Northern Portland Cement Company constructed a cement plant In the 1890s  to produce cement from marl harvested from a nearby lake.  Hence the town of Marlborough was created for the workers. Production boomed, and by 1905, Marlborough had 400 citizens. However, problems quickly arose, as the produced cement was inferior, production was costly, and the enormous energy demands of the plant required the construction of the largest power plant in the Lower Peninsula at the time. The Great Northern Portland Cement Company entered receivership in 1906, and the village houses were sold for salvage. The plant was dynamited for scrap iron, and by 1910 only the ruins of the plant remained. An enormous concrete building still stands near the road along with a labyrinth of concrete walls that are slowly being consumed by the forest. It was designated a Michigan State Historic Site in 1971.

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