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Destination: Michigan
Fayette Historic State Park
Fayette Historic State Park (Fayette Townsite) is an excellent restoration of a historic village. The state of Michigan says, "this well-preserved museum village recalls another time when it was a noisy, dirty company town with an immigrant population that shared daily hardships, joys and sorrows." Make sure you give yourself ample time to view all the cool buildings, it is recommend that you allot yourself at least two hours to visit all the buildings. Many visitors suggest that you plan to spend the whole day at the park.
Although Fayette is best known for its history of iron smelting, the history of the area actually starts long before that. Before the first white settlers arrived in the area it was inhabited by the Chippewa Indians, the particular tribe was the Bear Paw (Naquette) tribe. When the French arrived they named the two bays in the area Big and Little Bay de Noc after the Chippewa tribe. The location for the village of Fayette, around Snail Shell Harbor, was chosen for its protected, deep port, the limestone, and the hardwood that covered the entire region. The limestone and the lumber was used in the smelting process and was essential. Fayette was founded in 1867 by the Jackson Iron Company. The only reason the town was built was to extract iron from the iron ore mined nearby. The settlement by Snail Shell Harbor was purchased from a local land owner in 1864. A total of 140-acres made up the town-site. The town was named after Fayette Brown, the Jackson Iron Company agent who chose the site. The town site soon housed two blast furnaces, a large dock, several charcoal kilns, a hotel, a company store, and many houses. The whole village was owned by the Jackson Iron Company, and workers rented houses from the company and bought goods from the company store. At the height of the smelting operation nearly 500 people lived in the area. Most of these residents came from Canada, Great Britain, and northern Europe. These workers produced a total of 229,288 tons of pig iron in 24 years.
The workers produced pig iron in the blast furnaces by smelting iron ore with coke and limestone, this pig iron was shipped out of the area and remelted. The local limestone and hardwood that made the area such an appealing location was used in this process. The lumber served as fuel and the limestone purified the iron ore.
By 1891 Fayette had produced so much pig iron that it had used all the hardwood on the Garden peninsula. Lacking a fuel for the smelting process, the Jackson Iron Company closed the Fayette smelting operation.
morning with the towers by whitewaves
When the Company left Fayette so did most of its workers. Some families decided to stay behind and make use of the cleared forests and farm, while others remained in the harbor and became commercial fishermen. Today, Fayette is uninhabited and referred to as a ghost town. Fayette was restored by the Michigan State Park Service and the Michigan Department of Natural Resources, today the park encompasses 711 acres, three miles of shoreline on Big Bay De Noc, and twenty buildings. The restored buildings are now a museum village that offers a view of life in a company time. As well as encompassing the museum village, the Fayette State Park also has seven miles of hiking trails, 80 campsites, a beautiful sandy beach on Sand Bay, and offers boating, fishing, and scuba diving. Campsites can be found at the Park, for additional lodging travel about thirty miles north along the eastern edge of the peninsula to Manistique.
The Fayette Historic State Park includes:
- 20 historic buildings (furnace complex, town hall, hotel, company office and workers' homes)
- Museum exhibits
- Outdoor walking tours and scenic overlooks
- Modern visitor center
- Scheduled guided tours mid-June through August
- Camping, picnicking and swimming in Lake Michigan's Big Bay De Noc
- The Annual Fayette Heritage Day (early August)
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Posted/updated August 23, 2006
by Cody Sprattmoran
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