Michigan Ghost Towns of the Upper Peninsula

Michigan: the way it was. Michigan Ghost Towns compiles settlements and communities that have faded into Michigan's history and legend: ""Baraga County's $2,000,000 Ghost Railroad"" (Reprinted from the September 23, 1964 Issue of the L'Anse Sentinel by permission) A few rusty nails, some old telegraph poles and a bed grown over with brush and trees in the Huron Mountain district is all that remains today of a $2,000,000 railroad which never ran a train of cars and failed to bring in a cent of revenue. For several years men labored in the wilderness to lay 35 miles of tracks through rocky gorges and swamps from the mining town of Champion (now a ghost town) to Huron Bay. At Huron Bay an immense ore dock, buildings and homes were erected in preparation for a rush of business which the promoters of the Huron Bay and Iron Range Railway thought would make them wealthy. Pequaming: One of the largest ghost towns in the Upper Peninsula with buildings still standing is Pequaming. Located about 8 miles north of L'Anse, the huge smokestacks and water towers are visible from the L'Anse waterfront where the remains of the once prosperous industrial town lies at the tip of a tree-covered peninsula jutting out into the Keweenaw Bay. Emerson: Named after Chris Emerson, Saginaw millionaire lumberman and considered by some an eccentric. Thousands of tourists travel highway M-123 between Eckerman and Paradise each summer and visit the Tahquamenon Falls area, unaware that they pass near the site of this one-time lumbering and fishing village at the mouth of the Tahquamenon River where it empties into Lake Superior. What was once a road to the site is now a marsh- and weed-grown trail almost impassable by automobile. A spring flowing from a weed-covered mound is about all that remains where the town once was.

R. L. Dodge

Born in Lansing, Michigan in 1918, Roy L. Dodge was a descendant of Michigan pioneers.  He started investigating Michigan ghost towns in 1954.  He was a  well-known writer, with many articles appearing in leading newspapers around the state.  In 1970, he wrote the first of what would become his extremely popular series on Michigan ghost towns.