Ghost towns Archives - Page 7 of 8

Ruins of Assinins’ Orphanage

Posted on November 26, 2019 by Mike Sonnenberg Posted in Ghost towns, Schools, upper peninsula .

Only a small portion of the orphanage is still standing hidden behind the trees. The building once stood three stories tall and housed several children. Located in the small town, which is almost a ghost town, Assinins Is near US-41 a few miles north of Baraga.

Assinins was founded in 1843 by Bishop Frederic Baraga, who came to the area at the invitation of Chief Edward Assinins. Baraga built the Old St. Joseph Orphanage and School on the site in 1860. Over the years the orphanage was expanded and other buildings including a school were built. The structures were last used in the 1960s and in recent years they have collapsed.

This is a pic from Wikipedia of what the building looked like in 2009

The area is now a National Historic District and next time you are traveling along US-41 it’s worth a quick stop to check out the area and old cemetery.

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Ghost Town of Hagensville

Posted on November 23, 2019 by Mike Sonnenberg Posted in Ghost towns .

After stopping at a roadside park to read about the devastating fire in the small town of Metz, northwest of Alpena. ( can read my post about Metz HERE) I wanted to go to the Presque Ilse Lighthouse (you can read my post HERE) and I knew it was northeast from where I was, so I just started heading north. A few miles from Metz I saw this old building that looked like it had been a boarding house, or saloon, or general store, or probably all the above. I stopped and got a pic but I really had no idea of where I was.

When I got home I found out on google maps that I was in Hagensville, or at least what was left of it. An old building and some modern day farms. According to records, I found the Post Office was open from 1886 to 1912 and that William Hagen was the first postmaster. He and Wilson Pines owned the local sawmill.

I can only imagine at the turn of the 20th century that travelers would stop by on their arduous journey across northern Michigan while at the turn of the 21st century travelers whizz by at 55 miles per hour, and if they blink, they will miss it.

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Little Big Town of Watson

Posted on October 1, 2019 by Mike Sonnenberg 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 September 26, 2019 by Mike Sonnenberg 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 September 20, 2019 by Mike Sonnenberg 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 buildings 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 Porter Michigan

Posted on July 1, 2019 by Mike Sonnenberg 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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The Ghost Town of Allenville

Posted on June 19, 2019 by Mike Sonnenberg 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.

Because Amazon has pushed back shipping of books I have started selling books from my website. I have them in stock and you should have them in a few days if you live in Michigan. You can order them HERE

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The Ghost Houses

Posted on March 23, 2019 by Mike Sonnenberg 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 Keweenaw and worked in the mines. It must have been a hard life back in the day.

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The Hanging Tree and a Ghost Town

Posted on March 2, 2019 by Mike Sonnenberg Posted in Ghost towns, Murders .

Started in the 1880s, near Empire on the shores of Lake Michigan, the town of Aral was a small lumbering community. Charles Wright managed the sawmill and was known for his short temper and willingness to fight. In August of 1889, the Sheriff sent a deputy and treasurer to collect on taxes the sawmill owed to the county. Mr. Wright met the two men as they came into town and after a short argument, he shot and killed both of them leaving their bodies lay in the street. He went back to work at the sawmill as if nothing happened. He must have gotten word from someone that a telegraph message was sent back to the sheriff of the men’s murders. Charles Wright shut down operations for the day and then disappeared into the nearby forest. When the sheriff and a posse of 20 men showed up in the little town of Aral, they found Wright’s native American handyman Peter Lahala, and tied a rope around his neck. They threw it over a nearby tree and pulled him up then lowered him back down trying to get him to disclose the whereabouts of Charles Wright. A the start of hoisting Lahala a third time, two men marched Charles Wright out of the woods and he was taken into custody.

After the deadly events, The tree in town was forever known as “the hanging tree”. The town continued on until the timber was gone. The population slowly dwindled down and by the 1902s all the buildings and houses were moved away. Near Esch Beach, in the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore is a sign describing the former town of Aral. An old tree lies nearby, and many say that is the remains of the infamous hanging tree. The last two people to leave the town of Aral was Bertie and Donna Bancroft. They moved over to M-22 and built the Ken-Tuc-U-Inn which you can read about HERE

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The Forgotten Town and the Largest Farm in Michigan

Posted on February 10, 2019 by Mike Sonnenberg Posted in Barns and Farms, Ghost towns .

On the corner of Alicia and Bishop roads in Saginaw County was the town of Alicia. It was the largest town in the Praire Farms which at one time was the largest farm in Michigan. The Town was named after William Lewis Claus’s oldest daughter. Mr. Claus was the chairman of the board of Pittsburgh Plate Glass who owned the Prairie Farm, and the town was where most of the hired workers and their foremen lived. A generator and water plant provided electricity and water to the town that included 80 yellow framed cottages, a general store, a boarding house, dance hall, and several large barns and other buildings for machinery and wagons. A large grain elevator and mint distillery were situated on a spur track connecting the farm with the railroad six miles away. The population would grow to about 350 workers in the summer, and then about 75 in the winter. The post office opened in 1904 and closed in 1947.

When I made a trip out to where the town was, I found some modern houses and this old barn, I am not sure if it was used during the time that Prairie Farms operated, but it was the main feature in the area and I had to get a pic of it.

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