Fayette, the town the iron company left behind

Down at the tip of the Garden Peninsula, on a harbor so clear you can see the bottom from the cliffs above, sits a whole town that time forgot. Fayette was built in 1867 by the Jackson Iron Company, whose agent Fayette Brown picked the spot because it had everything an iron-smelter could want: a deep, protected harbor at Snail Shell Harbor, white limestone cliffs to feed the furnaces, and endless hardwood forest to burn into charcoal.

For twenty-four years Fayette roared. Some five hundred people lived here — many of them immigrants from Canada, Finland, and Norway — and the twin blast furnaces turned out almost a quarter-million tons of pig iron that helped build the railroads of a growing nation. Then the charcoal-iron business died, and in 1891 the company shut it all down. The people moved on, but the town stayed: the furnaces, the hotel, the town hall, the workers’ homes, some twenty buildings in all, standing quietly over the harbor.

Today it’s Fayette Historic State Park, often called one of the best-preserved historic company towns in the country. You can walk the streets, step inside furnished homes and museum buildings, climb the cliff-top trails ninety feet above the harbor, and even camp in the park. The townsite is open from late spring through fall; a Recreation Passport gets you in. Details at michigan.gov/dnr.