Ghost Towns

Another Upper Peninsula State Park. Fayette's Michigan's best ghost town; just an incredibly photogenic place, built around a reasonably intact charcoal blast furnace complex. Photo taken in June of 1998. The stone building in the foreground is the ruin of the company store and warehouse. The wooden structure served, among other things, as town hall and opera house. Camera: Nikon N90s

This is all that remains of a town called Onota, built in 1868, which smelted iron on the shores of Lake Superior. The town burned down in 1877 and was abandoned; only the furnace remains. The structure's been restored somewhat in recent years; 20 years ago it was in danger of collapsing into its component rocks. They've also added some historical commentary which wasn't there when I first found the place. The current town at more-or-less the same place is called Christmas. Really. It's near Munising, and the Pictured Rocks lakeshore. The Bay Furnace campground is one of the finest I know, albeit with only minimal facilities. This photo dates from June of 1998. I have earlier pictures; perhaps someday I'll post them. ================ You'll perhaps have noticed that I'm kinda partial to iron-foundry ghost towns....

Fayette's charcoal blast was a long-obsolete technology when it was built in 1877; the British iron industry had largely abandoned it a century before, and the steel industry's Bessemer/Kelly patent dispute had been settled for nearly a decade. I set out to research why Jackson Mining invested in old technology for my senior paper at Macalester, only to discover that Maria Quinlan Leiby, a friend from my bicycling days, had already written that paper. It's a surprisingly small world.

The New River Gorge has dozens of ghost towns.... Down below New River Bridge is a reasonably easy trail to the ruin of the Kaymoor mine. Properly speaking, this is not the Kaymoor ghost town; these are the buildings at the entrance to Kaymoor One. This mine closed in 1962, and the buildings have been neglected for four decades. The mine was about two thirds of the way up a thousand-foot hill. Most of the miners lived above the mine at Kaymoor Top, which is still inhabited, or below at Kaymoor Bottom. Besides housing for miners, Kaymoor Bottom had the rail connection to the outside world, and featured a battery of coke ovens for much of the mine's history. This town was abandoned more or less with the mine. There's a stair from the mine to Kaymoor Bottom, but Joan and I weren't up to the 800 steps.... The road below New River Bridge was once the sole roadway which crossed the gorge. It's a skinny, twisty, scenic path down the valley wall, across the bridge at Fayette Station, then back up the other side, crossing back and forth under the bridge in a series of switchbacks. Very scenic, but pretty intimidating.

Still another picture of Fayette's Opera House and the Company Store, with the limestone cliff that defines Snail Shell Harbor visible in the background. This picture dates from the early eighties; perhaps 1981, but I think a couple years later. "Opera House." Hmmm. It would be better styled a community hall, near as I can tell; the town government (such as it was) lived in this building, as did one or more businesses. The second floor's a meeting room, where (among other things) visiting entertainers put on their shows. I call it the Opera House because the state park did when I started visiting the town; I'm not sure whether the residents shared the conceit. Camera: Minolta Zoom 110 SLR

Hopewell, Pennsylvania. Camera: Minolta Freedom 100

Camera: Nikon N90s Another photo from our July, 2003, trip to the New River Gorge. Here's a different view of what still stands at the Kaymoor One mine site. The grill at the center of the photo protects a ventilation opening; the mine's entrance is behind the concrete building down the trail. This was a major mine, and during its prime this shelf on the canyon wall must have been a terribly busy place. Four decades after the operation closed, most of the mining structures are still standing but nature is reclaiming them and it certainly looks very different from what the miners must have known. Balancing preservation, safety, and natural decay is a challenge for the Parks Service, particularly in the parks in the National Heritage program areas. This location appears to test those efforts.

We're back in Fayette. Here (again) are the company store (on the left), the opera house/town hall (on the right)--and the hotel! When Fayette was an active town--mostly in the 1870s and 1880s--these buildings constituted the bulk of the Fayette "business district." The skilled tradesmen lived out on the peninsula (to the right), while general labor lived near the blast furnace (to the left). Everyone shopped at the store, and met for entertainment and governmental functions at town hall. The hotel--called the Shelton House--was both a boarding house and a host for visitors. For over a century, now, Fayette's been a tourist destination--a ghost town--and these buildings have survived largely because of formal and informal preservation efforts. A beautiful and attractive place which happens to be a significant historical artifact. The reason there's no background for this photo is that the buildings are on a relatively skinny spit of land. The photo was shot in June of 1981 from near the superintendent's home.

Fayette State Park , Garden Peninsula, Michigan. Fayette's at the north end of Lake Michigan, across Big Bay de Noc from Escanaba and really not far from Green Bay. That's Snail Shell Harbor in the foreground. I've labelled some of the buildings with notes. Taken from the trail atop the limestone cliffs . Camera: Nikon N90s. June, 1998.