Fall Travel Series: An abandoned town you can visit at Fayette State Park

You all know how much we like historic sites and abandoned towns after our previous visit to Elkmont, Tennessee and our return last year to see the renovations. Well, this abandoned town sits a little closer, just one state away and only a 3 hour drive from Green Bay, WI.

The feeling of this site is no where near as ominous or gloomy as our initial Elkmont experience. This town is impressively preserved and has a very museum-like quality to it. The buildings are not in disarray and feel as if they could be inhabitable in this decade. From the cabins overlooking the bluff, the farmhouse on the harbor and the massive hotel at the town’s center: this is the abandoned town of Historic Fayette State Park in Michigan’s upper peninsula.

Okay- so much to cover and so much to see! This visit for us took place in the summer as part of a camping trip. I wanted so badly to make it back to see the brick facade building and stone face cliffs in the full fall color but our weeks have filled up fast! I think an October road trip here would be perfect!

A bit of history- the town was originally constructed at this location between the Snail Snell Harbor and Sand Bay when it became a productive iron smelting operation between 1876 and 1891.

When the industry saw a decline in the charcoal iron market and lack of resources to maintain the purifying process needed for the iron, the Jackson Iron Company halted operations and many residents chose to move from the harbor town.

In the following years it became more of a resort and fishing village, even being acquired privately by a wealthy individual in 1916.

It exchanged hands with a private citizen again in 1946 but was eventually bought by the Escanaba Paper Company and traded to the Michigan government.

There are over 20 homes and former businesses available to tour on site. You only need a Michigan State Park pass to gain admission and the structures are open during daylight hours to stroll through at your leisure.

The era of the farmhouses took me back.

Right back to the renovation of the upstairs of our house. In the summer heat the old house smell matched how our upstairs smelled during the grueling gutting process. The paint colors, large base trim and wood plank floors all mimic the same construction of our own house.

A wooded hike takes you along the bluff where homes of residents are spread out in various states of renovation. Most offer some insight as to who lived in each. One home was also a doctors residence where patients were treated.

At the town center all the essential businesses were represented for a sustainable life in this secluded location. One of the more complete and functional renovations was the interior of the theater with a full stage on the second floor.

I enjoyed thinking about life in this waterside town. Enjoyed imagining the hustle of the bay and the simplicity of life within this peninsula. I’m sure there was little time for leisure. I’m sure that work and preparing for life from one season to the next filled the days of the people who gazed upon these views we enjoy as tourists today.

On our last morning in Fayette we hiked through the town before anyone else had woken up or began to meander. We wanted to see it without modern foot traffic, just to allow us that quiet peek back into time that we always relish. In the early morning sun a deer stood grazing in front of the buildings. She let me take this picture:

She stood there quietly observing us as we observed her. And it is on trips like these that you allow the wonder to sink in. The passing and evolution of time in a place and town like this. That you could blink your eyes on a hazy summer morning and imagine all the residents as they would have been back in the 1880’s. Beginning their day. Doors banging open, the clinking of harnesses and wagons being hitched, hooves on the gravel path…

The lone deer looking down the meadow at Fayette would startle and bound away into the trees, white tail waving goodbye.

But not today.

The sounds are but a memory, an echo in time.

She feels no pressure to move along… the town lays quiet, waiting for the day to begin.