Category Archives: Ghost towns

The Hard Scrabble Ghost Town of Keno

Posted on by Posted in Forgotten Places, Ghost towns .

Heading north out of St. Helen I went past this old building. I am not sure if it was a school, boarding house, or what. It looks like it has been standing for a long time. I looked on the map and it shows the name of Keno. I am wondering if it is the last remaining structure from the forgotten town.

From the research I did, I found out that the area was originally known as Hard Scrabble. The Hyde family came to the area from Virginia and were early settlers. The town was given the name of Keno and Sarah O. Wheeler became the first postmaster in 1910. I am not sure what happened to the town in later years, I can only assume the timber was cut and lumberjacks moved away.

P.S. They should have kept the name Hard Scrabble. I am thinking no one would forget a town with such a tough-sounding name.

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Little Big Town of Watson

Posted on by Posted in Ghost towns, upper peninsula .

The little town of Watson is near the middle of the Upper Peninsula. Not much of it remains today but a few residents and some old buildings. The town was a sawmill town and mail distribution point with the railroad passing trough it. Even though it only consisted of a few buildings Watson must have been a large metropolis to the people that lived around there in the late 1800s and early 1900s because there is nothing around for miles but forest.

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The Hidden Ghost Town Cemetery

Posted on by Posted in Cemetery, Ghost towns .

The town of Hamlin was a sawmill town founded by Charles Mears that was destroyed in a tragic event. The town began in 1852 with Mears Building a wooden dam on the Big Sable River which is in the present-day Ludington State Park. Over the years Hamling grew to have a school, church, saloons and several houses. In 1888 the wooden dam broke and the force of the rushing water pushed the building of Hamlin off their foundations and downstream. You can see some of the foundations and a few artifacts on the path along the river.

Most people that visit the park are unaware of the cemetery that is hidden in the woods. It’s up on a hill not far from the parking lot for Hamlin Beach. The cemetery only has a few headstones and is surrounded by an old wooden fence.

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The Secret Michigan Ghost Town You Need To Visit

Posted on by Posted in Ghost towns, upper peninsula .

Michigan has a few historic towns you can visit, but there is one that few people know about. It is located way up in the Keweenaw Peninsula between Calumet and Copper Harbor on US-41. A small brown and white sign that simply reads ” Central Mine Visitors Center” points to the old town. Most tourists just think it is a simple little visitors center for one of the many former mines in the area, but they are mistaken.

Central Mine is the name of a company town that was built by the copper mining company of the same name. The mine was open in the 1850s and closed in the 1890s after the copper ore was depleted. The town at one time had a population of 900 residents. The miners who were mostly immigrants from Cornwall England moved away after The Central Mine turned off the pumps and sealed the shafts. In the 1950s, the last permanent resident in the town of Central Mine left.

The Keweenaw County Historical Society owns 38 acres of the old Central Mine site and town. It operates the visitors center located in a former house. The society has also restored several houses and building in the old town. Some are open to visitors and decorated with antiques from the period they were built.

When I visited, the small town was strangely quiet. I could walk through the open houses and explore the area. It was like stepping back in time going into a house over a century old and the items inside from back in the day. If you visit be sure to stop by the visitors center first and look at the map since some of the property is still private and closed to tourists.

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The Ghost Town of Onominese

Posted on by Posted in Cemetery, Ghost towns .

Rows of white wooden crosses stand in a simple cemetery near Lake Michigan. The people laid to rest under them is all that remains of Onominese. A small Indian village named after the Indian Chief Onominese. ( also spelled Onominee) The town was about five miles north of Leland, in the Leelanau Peninsula on Lake Michigan. The people that lived there mostly traveled to the town by canoe as there were no roads that led to the village.

Reverend Smith traveled through crude forest trails almost every Sunday from Northport to conduct church services. A small schoolhouse was built after the Civil War ended in 1865. Beside bringing religion and education to the native Americans the white man brought an epidemic of smallpox and diphtheria that killed off most of the small village’s population. It is the white crosses of those that died which stand in the filed near Lake Michigan to tell the story of the small Indian village that once was.

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Judd’s Corner

Posted on by Posted in Ghost towns .

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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The Ghost Town of Porter Michigan

Posted on by Posted in Ghost towns .

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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Ghosts of Rattle Run

Posted on by Posted in Ghost towns, Murders .

Along Rattle Run Road is an old cemetery. It is all that remains of the town of Rattle Run. The town was named after the Rattle Run river that runs nearby. The creek was given the name because on a quiet night the water running over the pebbles made a rattling sound. The town is gone but the memory of one of Michigan’s most infamous murders still remains. You can read about it in my post HERE

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The Ghost Town of Allenville

Posted on by Posted in Ghost towns .

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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The Ghost Houses

Posted on by Posted in Ghost towns, upper peninsula .

Michigan has a few lumbering and mining ghost towns scattered around the state. Near the old historic Quincy Mine north of  Hancock, I saw these old forgotten houses. They are on US-41 in Franklin Township. I call them ghost houses because the area still has people living and working in it, but I assume these were old miners houses. The name of the town where these houses stand is or was Franklin Mine, named after the mine in the area. They look as if the historical society or someone is preserving them. They make me wonder about the people who lived in the Keewenaw and worked in the mines. It must have been a hard life back in the day.

I am fascinated by the beauty and the history in the Keweenaw Peninsula and have more pics to post and stories to share. I hope you will subscribe to email notifications so you won’t miss any new posts.

 

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