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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