Dousman's Mill (the old Historic Mill Creek)

A few miles southeast of Mackinaw City, where Mill Creek tumbles down to Lake Huron, sits one of the oldest industrial sites in the Great Lakes. Back in the late 1700s, a trader named Robert Campbell dammed the creek and built a water-powered sawmill here to cut lumber for the busy Straits of Mackinac — much of it shipped across to build the settlement on Mackinac Island. A farm and a gristmill grew up alongside it, and the little complex ran for about fifty years before it was abandoned and slowly forgotten.

A Cheboygan man rediscovered the site in the 1970s, and archaeologists pieced the story back together — even reading the saw marks on old Mackinac Island buildings to work out how the original mill ran. Today it’s a state historic park run by Mackinac State Historic Parks, with a rebuilt water-powered sawmill, a millwright’s house, and several miles of wooded trails along the creek. Long known as Historic Mill Creek, the site was renamed Dousman’s Mill in 2025, after the Mackinac Island merchant who once owned it.

For people in this corner of the county, it’s a quiet, beautiful spot with a surprising amount of history packed into it. The park is closed while its visitor center is rebuilt, with a reopening expected in spring 2027; you can check its status at mackinacparks.com.