Fayette Historic Townsite: A Walking Tour of Michigan's Largest Ghost Town

Fayette is one of the largest and oldest ghost towns in Michigan, and arguably one of the best preserved. From 1867 to 1891 it was a busy iron-smelting town on Lake Michigan's Snail Shell Harbor, home to nearly 500 people at its peak. Today it's Fayette Historic State Park, and you can walk its streets, peek into its buildings and stand inside the old furnace complex. I visited in November, right after peak tourist season, and had the parking lot to myself.

Quick facts

• Location: Fayette Historic State Park, on Snail Shell Harbor in Michigan's Upper Peninsula

• Getting there: Drive in and start at the visitor center, then walk down to the townsite

• Cost: A Michigan Recreation Passport for your vehicle

• Time needed: 2 to 3 hours

• Best season: Late spring through fall. November is quiet if you want the town to yourself.

• Extras: Kayak rentals in summer ($30 for 24 hours when I visited)

A short history of Fayette

The Jackson Iron Company built Fayette to smelt iron ore into high-quality charcoal iron for the American steel industry. The town ran on a mix of human, animal and steam power, with limestone quarried from its own white cliffs and charcoal made in kilns on site. Most residents were immigrant families.

When the charcoal iron market declined, the furnaces closed in 1891 and most people left to find work elsewhere. Fayette became a resort and fishing village, and in 1959 it became a state park.

Before you start

Start at the visitor center, then follow the ramp down toward the townsite. There's also an overlook trail to the right if you want a view from above first. The park's rules are worth knowing:

• Wear shoes in the townsite. There are still nails and glass in the ground.

• No smoking inside the historic buildings.

• Stay off the old stone walls.

• Leave the iron and slag where you find them. They're part of the site.

• Keep pets on a leash.

What to see on a walk through Fayette

Village jail and locomotive house. Near the bottom of the ramp are the village jail and the ruins of the locomotive house. The trench in front was a service pit where workers repaired the town's steam locomotives from below. Nearby is the hand pump the whole community once used for water.

Machine shop. Machinists kept Fayette's industrial equipment running from this brick building, using machinery driven by steam piped from the furnace boilers. You can get a glimpse inside through the openings.

The hotel. The biggest surprise of the visit. This large wooden building looks too big to be a house, and a picture inside confirms it was the town's hotel. Behind it is Lake Michigan and Slag Beach, an old industrial dump site where glassy slag mixed with iron still washes up.

Laborers' Alley. Only slight dips in the ground mark where more than 30 small log cabins once stood for unskilled workers and their families, most of them households of five or more. There was no town dump, so residents threw garbage into the harbor, onto Slag Beach or into the streets. An 1879 newspaper report said there was no excuse for the state of this alley. One reconstructed cabin lets you look inside.

Company store. Now an open shell with no roof or windows, framed by the white cliffs. It stocked goods from Chicago, Milwaukee and Detroit and let families buy on credit from the Jackson Iron Company. Mail-order catalogs were cheaper, though, and one resident said the store was generally considered a "pluck me", a common nickname for exploitative company stores.

Town hall. A large three-story building I first took for a house. Look for the roof peak that isn't quite centered.

Snail Shell Harbor. In the late 1800s the harbor had more than 900 feet of docks and a four-story grain elevator, and you can still see some of the old pilings. In summer you can rent a kayak here. It was $30 for a 24-hour rental when I visited.

The middle-class neighborhood. Past the harbor, a forest walkway leads to more houses, some being restored, plus cellar holes and foundation ruins. One foundation was a boarding house for single workers: in 1880 almost half of Fayette's adult men were boarders. Nearby you'll find a doctor's house, and the superintendent's house, one of the largest and most recently restored homes, with a view of the bay.

The furnace complex. The highlight for me. Iron ore was crushed, mixed with charcoal and limestone, and lifted by a steam-powered hoist to the top of the furnace stacks. You can see both smelting towers, step inside a charcoal kiln (my first time ever standing inside one), see a lime kiln, and finish at the limestone quarry that supplied the whole town.

Map and directions

Get directions to Fayette Historic State Park in Google Maps. Want to see where else I've been? Check out the CDR Adventures Travel Map.

Tips for visiting Fayette

• Go in the shoulder season. November meant an empty townsite and no crowds in my photos.

• Plan two to three hours to walk the townsite, the harbor and the furnace complex at an easy pace.

• Bring a Michigan Recreation Passport. Fayette is a state park, so your vehicle needs one.

• Wear sturdy shoes. The rules about nails and glass are there for a reason.

• Read the plaques. Most buildings have one, and they tell the story better than any guidebook.

Is Fayette worth the drive?

Yes. Few ghost towns let you walk through a whole community like this, from the workers' cabins to the hotel to the furnaces that kept it running. If you like history, old buildings or photography, it's one of the best stops in the Upper Peninsula.

Fayette inspired the CDR Adventures Ghost Town Explorer tee. For more ghost towns and historic sites, subscribe to CDR Adventures on YouTube.