Town Name: Fayette
Population:
During the day in the summer, the
town site is populated by staff as well as visitors from around the
country. After sundown there are only strollers from the campground
as well as the spirits of the past.
Reason For Becoming a Lost Town:
The hardwood forests were decimated and the
product became noncompetitive. For a time the company leased and
later sold the town for use as a summer resort. The town was saved
for posterity in 1959 when it was purchased by the State of
Michigan as a Historic Park.
Town History:
Fayette was a company town. The residents
lived in company housing and shopped at the company store. The
Jackson Iron Company of Negaunee built the town in 1867 and owned
everything in it, including,so some of them said, the bodies and
souls of its employees. At one time it was one of the Upper
Peninsula's most productive iron-smelting operations. Located on
the Garden Peninsula at Snail Shell Harbor, Fayette grew up around
two blast furnaces, a large dock and several charcoal kilns. Nearly
five hundred residents, many immigrating from Canada, the British
Isles and northern Europe, lived in and near the town that existed
to make pig iron using ore barged in from the railhead at Escanaba,
limestone from the surrounding cliffs and hardwoods from the
company owned 20,000 acres of nearby forests.
At its peak in the late 1880's, Fayette had
a general store, office building, superintendent's and supervisor's
houses, a machine shop, black smith, doctor's office, hotel,
boardinghouse, opera house, and 40 log cabins for its workers and
their families, but no saloons. The company decreed that whiskey
would never be sold in the town. However on paydays or festive
occasions, a well-stocked liquor boat would anchor off Fayette and
small boats were sent ashore to collect customers.
The smelting operation lasted from for 24
years from the end of the Civil War to 1891 when competition from
coke-fired Bessemer furnaces in Indiana, Ohio, and Pennsylvania
made the operation obsolete. The company sold it in l920 for
$l0,000, the first of numerous times it changed hands.The town
continued for a time as a resort. This resulted in the preservation
and maintenance of most of the dwellings and commercial buildings
but the industrial structures slowly decayed. Today, visitors to
Fayette State Park see nineteen structures including several public
and commercial buildings, residences which housed the people of
Fayette, and the stabilized ruins of the furnace
complex.
http://www.michigan.gov/images/mhc_fay_fayettesite_map_48452_7.jpg
Cache Description:
Because of the nature of the site, there is
no container at the listed coordinates. This is a virtual cache. To
get credit for this cache, put yourself in the picture, upload a
picture of yourself on stage with your log. Logs without the
required picture will be deleted.
Notes of Interest:
This cache is available seasonally. The
visitors center and buildings are open from 9:00 am to 7:00 pm
daily from mid-May through mid-October and a Michigan State Park
Motor Vehicle Permit is required for entrance. This is definitely
not a "park and grab". The park is located 16 miles south of US2
and it will take you at least three hours for touring the
townsite.The location is a perfect overnight or extended stay for
campers. The park features a 61-site campground and three miles of
shoreline on Big Bay De Noc. Although the facilities are pit
toilets, electric hookups and water are at each site.One of our
favorite activities was sitting by the harbor in the evening and
telling ghost stories to the kids.
This cache is part of the Michigan's Lost
Towns cache series. Visit this link to see
the complete list and to submit your own!!
