The chimney that survived Port Hope's mill fires

At the Lake Huron edge of Stafford County Park, an old stone-and-brick chimney rises with no mill around it. The stack went up with William R. Stafford’s sawmill in 1858, the business around which Port Hope began.

The mill did not have an easy life. Fire destroyed it, its dock, and the lumber on hand in 1871. Stafford and his partner rebuilt in 1872, only to lose the mill and dock again in the 1881 Thumb fire. Stafford then put up a smaller sawmill and planing operation for local work. The National Register study found the sawmill listed as late as 1893 and said it probably closed in the early 1890s. The 1858 chimney served all three versions.

Here is the useful correction to the usual shorthand: this is not Michigan’s only surviving lumber-era mill chimney. The 1987 National Register study documented two chimney sites a few hundred feet apart in Port Hope, one at Stafford’s sawmill and another at a later planing mill. It also identified a third mill stack at Port Crescent. At that time, state preservation staff knew those three as the only above-ground remnants of Michigan’s former large-scale sawmill and planing-mill operations.

That narrower claim is still remarkable, and it tells the story better. Port Hope began with a mill and dock, endured two major fires, and shifted toward farming as the timber disappeared. What remains at the park is not a lone statewide survivor, but one of a very small, documented group of stacks that lets you see the lumber era in the landscape.