Fayette, Michigan: The Iron Town That Burned Its Forests and Closed

01Why the Jackson Iron Company Built Fayette

Fayette, an unincorporated community in Fairbanks Township, sits about eight miles south of Garden. The Michigan History Center says the Jackson Iron Company chose the site, and that its manager, Fayette Brown, selected it for what the land offered. The harbor handled shipping. The limestone cliffs supplied flux for the furnaces and stone for building. The surrounding hardwood forests supplied charcoal. The town took Brown's name.

The location solved a cost problem. According to Northern Michigan University's "Remnants: U.P. Ghost Towns" collection, ore had previously been shipped to eastern coal towns to be smelted, at great expense. Smelting it beside the ore's source, with fuel cut from the nearby forest, was cheaper. The NMU account says ore reached Fayette from Escanaba. A feature in My North describes the route in more detail: the Peninsula Railroad carried ore from the mines at Negaunee, and it then crossed Big Bay de Noc to the furnaces. The railroad never reached Fayette itself. The furnace had no rail connection, so the harbor was its only link to the outside.

02Life in a Company Town: Furnaces, Kilns and a Coronet Band

Legends of America describes a town built around two blast furnaces, charcoal kilns, a lime kiln and a large dock. Fayette made charcoal pig iron and lime from 1867 to 1891. The iron went to steel producers on the lower Great Lakes.

Output figures differ by source. The Michigan History Center says nearly 230,000 tons. Michiganrailroads.com gives 229,288 tons over 24 years. Legends of America says over 225,000 tons, and the NMU collection says 200,000 tons over 23 years. All of them describe production on a scale that justified a town.

At its peak, the Michigan History Center puts the population at about 500, mostly immigrants. Legends of America says most came from Canada and northern Europe, and that half the population were children. The same source reports that employees shared a little over $5,000 in payroll each month, though that figure comes from a single account.

The townsite had a school, a post office and a company store. Residents also had a coronet band, a baseball team and a horse racing track. The post office opened on September 13, 1870, with Marvin H. Brown as postmaster.

The work was hard on the people who did it. The state's historical marker for the smelting process names a laborer, "Pig Iron" Fred Rink. My North calls him Fred Hinks and says he crippled himself lifting two bars of pig iron at once, then opened a saloon. The two sources spell his name differently, and only the magazine tells the saloon story.

Legends of America also describes "Slag Beach," a dumping ground for industrial waste next to the laborers' homes. The company used slag as road base and fill. That detail comes from one source.

03What Happened to Fayette?

The end came gradually. The NMU collection records the town's largest fire in 1883. Fayette was rebuilt but never regained its former influence. In the same decade the furnaces sat idle for stretches as demand for pig iron fell.

The fuel supply was the larger problem. The NMU account says the hardwoods near the town were used up, and bringing in charcoal from distant kilns was too costly. Legends of America and michiganrailroads.com both point to the same two causes, the loss of the forests and a declining market for charcoal iron. My North adds that a more efficient smelting process in the East pushed prices down, though that explanation appears in only one source.

Smelting stopped in 1891. Most of the workers and families left. Some residents stayed and farmed. Fayette's story ends differently from that of many industrial towns, because the buildings did not disappear. The site became a local tourist destination and continued as a small resort community until the mid-1950s.

04Can You Visit Fayette Today?

Yes. The State of Michigan acquired the townsite in 1959, and it is now Fayette Historic State Park, located between Snail Shell Harbor and Sand Bay. The Michigan History Center operates it as a living-museum village with a visitor center, and the surviving structures have been stabilized.

The designations came before the state park. Fayette became a Michigan State Historic Site on August 23, 1956. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on February 16, 1970, reference number 70000269.

05What Remains of Fayette Today

The surviving structures include the blast furnace, hotel, office, residences, town hall and machine shop, according to the Michigan History Center. Michigan Trail Maps says more than 20 buildings still stand. Visitors walk a street plan that follows the original company town, with the limestone cliffs above the harbor and the slag-built shoreline below.

Abandoned Fayette is better preserved than most Upper Peninsula industrial sites, because the state took it over before it fell apart. What it shows is not a ruin in the usual sense. It is a company town left almost whole, with the furnace complex that justified its existence still standing at the water's edge.