Fayette: the ghost town Delta County kept perfect

At the end of Delta County’s Garden Peninsula stands a whole town that time politely skipped. It sits on a horseshoe harbor backed by white limestone cliffs. Fayette was an iron-smelting company town. It boomed from 1867 to 1891 — and then simply stopped. Instead of rotting away, it became Fayette Historic State Park. Twenty-some preserved buildings stand exactly as workers left them. They run from the towering furnace complex to the hotel, opera house, and supervisor’s house. Snail Shell Harbor’s clear green water laps at the old dock pilings. It is widely called one of the nation’s best-preserved historic industrial townsites. It’s also called Michigan’s best-preserved ghost town.

Fayette crowns a county that quietly owns the U.P.’s gentlest side. Escanaba and Gladstone have sandy Lake Michigan beaches and marinas — warm-water swimming, in the Upper Peninsula. The Stonington Peninsula has its lighthouse and its famous fall monarch-butterfly gatherings. And every August, Escanaba hosts the U.P.’s own state fair, a tradition dating to 1928. Delta is where the U.P. meets the beach, with an 1880s time capsule for a bonus.