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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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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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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This big old red and green house stands near the tip of the Thumb in Port Austin. It is now known as the Garfield Inn but it was originally built by Charles G. Learned. A historical marker stands next to it and reads:

A native of New York, contractor Charles G. Learned helped build New York City’s water-works system and the Erie Canal. Around 1837 Learned and his brother-in-law purchased several thousand acres of pine land in Michigan’s Thumb area. Two years later, Learned and his wife, Maria Raymond, came to Port Austin and bought a house and three acres at this site. Learned’s cutover pine land became a 2,000-acre farm where he prospered as an agriculturalist and dairy farmer. With profits from his lumbering and farming enterprises Learned enlarged and updated this house in the French Second Empire style. In the 1860s Ohio congressman, later president, James A. Garfield, a family friend, was a frequent guest here. From 1931 to 1979 the house served as the Mayes Inn and Tower Hotel.

There were rumors that President Garfield was smitten for Charles Learned’s wife Maria and that president requested that he travel to Port Austin to see her after being shot, but he was not permitted to travel and died from his gunshot wounds.

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