Fayette

Snail Shell Harbor, Fayette State Park, Michigan.

130 or so years ago this was a dock, shipping iron ingots down the Great Lakes. Snail Shell Harbor, Fayette State Park, Michigan.

When I first visited Fayette they called this the Opera House; now they call it the Town Hall. I'm not particularly convinced either name is right--or wrong. It was a multi-function building with a meeting room upstairs. Fayette State Park, Michigan.

Or half of the store, anyway; the building's attached to a similarly-deteriorated warehouse. The was the company store at Fayette.

To the extent that Fayette had a central business district, this was it. The Town Hall and a salt-box house (set up as a schoolhouse, though that's not authentic) to the left, with the Company Store peaking through. Dead center is the Company Office, with the Machine Shop behind. That's the hotel behind the large lilac bush. In the distance, behind everything, you can see a bit of the blast furnace complex. Fayette State Park, Michigan.

Fayette State Park again. The Superintendent's House ("The White House") is on the hill to the left, where the boss can oversee the blast furnaces, which are just to my right. Snail Shell had everything Jackson Mining was looking for: A deep water harbor, large nearby woods for fueling the blast furnace, and (very) nearby limestone to use for flux in the blast operation. Not to mention, of course, a convenient rail connection to bring Jackson Mine's ore to the furnace. Fayette lives on, well over a century after the last blast, partly because of the ruined buildings, and partly because the location's just beautiful.

One last look--for now--at the abandoned iron processing town at Fayette State Park at the northern end of Lake Michigan. This harbor was once a loud and busy place on the edge of a wilderness, but that stopped over a century ago. It's survived, mostly as a tourist attraction, largely because of its beauty, and its interesting history.

Fayette State Park, Michigan. I've explained about Fayette --one of my favorite places--before. More than once . Photo taken with a Minolta Zoom 110 in 1981.