Michigan's Little Known Ghost Towns - Lost Ports, Mining Camps And Vanished Company Towns
About this episode
This episode explores Michigan's ghost towns, detailing their histories and the reasons for their decline.
Michigan is full of towns that once had mills, mines, hotels, post offices, rail depots, docks, stores and big plans. Then the timber ran out. The copper market fell. The railroad moved. The dunes shifted. The fires came. The ships stopped calling. And in many cases, the town simply faded from the map. In this episode of End of the Road in Michigan, we take a lively trip through some of Michigan’s most interesting ghost towns, from the Upper Peninsula to the Thumb and the Lake Michigan shore. These are not just spooky names on old maps. They were working communities built around lumber, copper, salt, fishing, shipping, farming and tourism. The episode covers well-known and lesser-known Michigan ghost towns, including Fayette, Freda, Sigma, Berne, Alabaster, Linkville, New River and Port Crescent, along with added stops at Singapore, Port Oneida, Pere Cheney, Old Victoria, Nonesuch, Disco, Aral, Edgewater, Good Harbor, Glen Haven, Central Mine and Clifton. Some towns, like Fayette, survive as preserved historic sites. Others, like Singapore, were swallowed by Lake Michigan sand after the timber was cut away. Port Crescent, once a busy Lake Huron port near the Pinnebog River, had…
Topics covered
- ghost towns
- Michigan history
- abandoned places
- cultural heritage
- travel
Mentioned in this episode
Places: Michigan, Upper Peninsula, Thumb, Lake Michigan, Fayette, Freda, Sigma, Berne, Alabaster, Linkville
More episodes of The End of the Road in Michigan
- Trucks, Sugar & Survival: The World War I History of Alma Michigan.
- The Fishing Village of Leland Michigan: One of The Last Commercial Fisheries on Lake Michigan
- The Hotel Ojibway: Luxury, Legends, and Life Along the Soo Locks
- Pere Marquette Docks Show How Arcadia Served The Great Lakes
- Ora Labora: Michigan’s Lost Colony on Wild Fowl Bay
- Hillman, Michigan: Fire, Rails and Lake Avalon in a Northern Village
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