I saw this old church standing among the farm fields in the Thumb somewhere near Caseville. It looks as if it has been a while since it has seen a baptism or wedding. I don’t know anything about it but it looked rather peaceful watching over the crops.
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This beautiful fieldstone house stands along M-25 north of Harbor Beach in front of the Marina. It was built by James Grice who came to the Thumb in the 1860s from England. The house survived the great fire of 1881 and remained in the family until the 1960s when it was acquired by the city of Harbor Beach. It is now a museum displaying artifacts to remind visitors what life was like decades ago.
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Underneath the Blue Water Bridge in Port Huron is the old Grand Trunk Railway Depot built in 1856. This is the depot a young Thomas Alva Edison worked at while selling newspapers and books to passengers. This is the part where I am supposed to write about Edison’s accomplishments, but I am thinking most people already know what Edison did, and how he impacted the way we live with his light bulb and other inventions. The depot is now a museum and welcomes visitors.
P.S. Maybe it’s just me, but I think Port Huron is one of the most underrated tourist cities in Michigan. I love walking along the river watching the ships sail past. Checking out the historic buildings and visiting the lighthouses. There is a lot to see and do in Port Huron and I think many Michiganders overlook it for trips and vacations.
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This odd looking structure stands a few miles south of Oak Beach between Caseville and Port Austin. Titled CELESTIAL SHIP OF THE NORTH (EMERGENCY ARK) it was created by artist Scott Hocking. Constructed on Goretski Family farmland it was created using materials from a collapsed 1890s barn. It is an odd sight to see especially if you were unaware of it.
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O.K., I wasn’t really lost in Silverwood, that would be hard to do since there are only a few streets in the town. The town sits in the Thumb between Mayville and Marlette. I found this building that looks like and old school house or a church, or probably both. There is an old store in town that I have tried to get a pic of a few times, but every time I am in Silverwood there was a truck parked in front of it, oh well, maybe on the next trip.
When the railroad was ran through the area in 1882, the residents applied for a post office. One suggested naming it something easy to remember, and the post office named “Easy” opened on April 13, 1882, with James R. Chapin as the first postmaster. The name changed to “Rollo” on March 27, 1890, and changed again on May 2, 1892 to “Silverwood”, after the nearby stands of white pine. For what it’s worth, I like the name Silverwood, it sounds like something from a Clint Eastwood western.
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This old concrete building stands next to the railroad tracks in Palms. I am not sure what it was orginally used for but it looks as if it has been a long time since it was utilized.
You could possibly call Palms a ghost town but a few people still live in the small town located in the Thumb between Cass City and Lake Huron. I figured a name like palms it was named after the palm tree but as any astute Michigander will tell you there are no palm trees in Michigan. The village was settled in 1850 by Canadians John Smith & Michael Dyer. It was businessman Francis Palms who owned most of the land for timber, and when he brought the railroad to the little community in 1881 they named the town in his honor.
Palms owned the most land in Michigan in the mid-1800s in both the Lower and Upper Peninsulas. After harvesting the timber he sold the land but retained the mineral rights. He made a fortune off the copper that was discovered under the property he once owned. He was the president of the Michigan Stove Company and vice president of the Detroit, Mackinac and Marquette Railroad. At the time of his death, his estate and savings were worth over ten million dollars. The largest estate in Michigan at the time.
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This Second Empire style mansion In Port Sanilac was built in the 1870s by Doctor Joseph Loop. A native of New York, Loop moved to Oakland County, Michigan, in 1843. he and his wife, Jane Gardner Loop pioneered this land in Sanilac County in 1854, and after graduating from the University of Michigan medical department in 1855, he opened a practice in Port Sanilac. When this home was built, he kept an office on the lower floor, and serviced a forty-mile circuit, bringing medical care to much of the county. Doctor Loop died in 1903 at the age of ninety-three, leaving the home to his only child, Ada. She and her husband, the Reverend Julius Harrison passed it in turn to one of their sons, Captain Stanley Harrison. In 1964 he deeded it to the Sanilac County Historical Society for a museum.
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The town of Port Sanilac stands along Lake Huron at the intersection of M-46 and M-25. The lighthouse in town has been guiding ships in this harbor town since 1886. It has a unique tapered tower that flares out at the top. I read somewhere this was done to conserve bricks during construction. The lighthouse is privately owned but you can get a good view of it from the park next to it.
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This beautiful old house stands along M-25 south of Lexington. I am not sure about its history but it is now a bed and breakfast.
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Nestled among the trees and over a small creek is an old iron truss bridge. The sign hanging from the top beams reads: MICHIGAN BRIDGE AND PIPE CO. LANSING MICHIGAN. You can see the old bridge from M-25 near Port Austin and it was part of the old sawmill town of Port Crescent. The town started back in 1844 when Walter Hume built a hotel and trading post near the mouth of the Pinnebog River. A few sawmills sprang up in the area around the river and the town was known as Pinnebog but another town upriver had the same name. It was decided to change the name of the town to Port Crescent for the crescent shape the river made as it flowed into the Saginaw Bay.
The lumber town continued to thrive and even survived the Great Fire of 1871. Woods and Company built a large steam-powered sawmill with a brick smokestack that soared into the sky. The town had several houses and even built a large two-story schoolhouse to educated the children. By 1881 the lumberjacks had cut most of the timber, and what was still standing, was mostly destroyed by the great fire that swept through the thumb. Slowly houses and buildings were moved or dismantled and taken to the surrounding towns such as Port Austin and Bad Axe. By 1894 all the buildings were gone and very little remained of the once prosperous town. The trees were gone, but a few people realized the sand was valuable for glass making and copper smelting and began mining and shipping the sand around the Great Lakes.
By the 1930s sand mining operations have ceased and that would have been the end of the land being used for anything. After WWII and the prosperity that followed Michigan families began vacationing during the summer. The state of Michigan acquired the property along the shoreline in 1959 and established the Port Crescent State Park. Little remains of the town of Port Crescent. The old bridge is used for a hiking trail and the foundation for the sawmill chimney stands near the entrance to the campground. Next time you visit Port Crescent State Park, or drive past the sign for it on M-25, maybe you will remember the town and the hard-working lumberjacks who lived there.
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