| The author snowshoes toward the brick furnace complex in Fayette Historic State Park overlooking Snail Shell Harbor and the bluffs.
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Snowshoeing with Jim Joque
Fayette Historic State Park
Where local and personal history meet in the U.P.
On a brisk winter day last season, I strapped snowshoes to my feet and set out for a day of exploration and hiking in Michigan's Upper Peninsula between Escanaba and Manistique. Soon I crested a hill and came
within view of the mysterious ghost town of Fayette, now the town site of Fayette Historic State Park. I could see the largest wooden building, an old hotel; gray and tattered but still majestic. On a small hill across from the hotel stood a company store and town hall. The hill sloped down toward an abandoned harbor.
Back here for the first time in many years, I was overcome with nostalgia for my childhood. On that very hill
my brothers and sisters played while my parents and grandmother set out on a blanket the fixings for a picnic. Hundreds of people surrounded us doing the same thing and celebrating the annual Blessing of the Fleet, a July tradition since 1948.
Attendance at this event peaked when I was a child in the 1950s and early 1960s. We all came to witness the Catholic Bishop from our diocese blessing the myriad of decorated boats in the harbor.
Fayette sits on a tiny peninsula that curls into Snail Shell Bay. This peninsula juts out of the larger Garden Peninsula on the eastern flank of Big Bay de Noc of Lake Michigan. My father grew up just seven miles north of Fayette in the small village of Garden and often would swim in the Fayette harbor. My mother's mother was a school teacher in Garden. So visiting Fayette and Garden brings back many fond summer memories for my family.
A much different scene presented itself during my solo snowshoe visit last winter. The stately limestone bluffs topped with old growth cedars still towered to the west, Snail Shell Harbor lay below, frozen and blanketed of snow. I sat on a log and marveled at the silence. A century ago, this area was a hustling and bustling industrial community.
An industrious past
In the late 1800s, Fayette had about 500 residents, many of them Canadian and European immigrants
working for an iron-smelting business. Named after Fayette Brown, the agent who chose the site for the Jackson Iron Company, the Upper Peninsula company town was highly productive in manufacturing charcoal pig iron from 1867 to 1891. Some 229,288 tons of iron was produced during its 24 years of operation. Local hardwood was cut to fuel the furnaces and limestone was quarried from the adjacent bluff
to purify the iron ore. The company ceased operations when the bottom fell out of the iron market.
According to Judith Manning, author of Our Heritage: The Garden Peninsula, the property was first sold to the Cleveland Cliff Iron Company. Eventually, the Escanaba Paper Company traded the site to the state of Michigan for timberland elsewhere. A year later, in 1959, Fayette became a state park.
A plaque on the property reads, "We are not going to reconstruct Fayette to attract tourist dollars, but we are going to preserve Fayette for what it is – an outstanding historical site."
The Michigan Department of Natural Resources has done that and then some with its efforts since 1974. The historic town site now includes 20 historic buildings and exhibits, and offers outdoor walking tours as well as guided tours in the warm weather months.
Park utilized locally
Fayette Historic State Park is open for year-round recreation, with ample opportunity for picnicking, camping, hiking, swimming and fishing from mid-May through Labor Day. During the winter, visitors cross-country ski and snowshoe.
Park rangers report that its primarily local Garden Peninsula residents who ski and 'shoe the more than five miles of trail. Few folks from outside the area venture to this winter wonderland. Consequently, it provides
the occasional snowshoer, such as myself, with solitude and tranquility. During my short visit last winter, I saw only one family and a couple on snowshoes visiting the town site. The rest of the park was all mine.
Before leaving the town site, I stopped to marvel at the huge brick furnace complex and few remaining cone-shaped lime kilns. These structures brought this town into existence. Over-dependence on the iron smelting business also led to the community fading away.
With that realization, I, too turned my back on the town to climb the trail to the top of the limestone bluff. My parents never allowed us children to hike up the bluff, and rightfully so. But now, as an adult, I was free to do it. I had earned the right to stop at each of the four lookouts, all offering grand views of the harbor and Big Bay de Noc. I was delighted to have disobeyed my parents this one time.
The forest of cedar and balsam along the bluff captivated me. As the trail headed easterly, I came upon a more deciduous trees and a fewer conifers. The aged limestone provides the right habitat for old-growth cedars – some hundreds of years old – as well as therare slender cliff-brake fern.
The northern one-mile loop starts near the first scenic outlook and circles back to the ranger's contact
station. The park's south loop begins at the contact station and offers an enjoyable forested hike of about 1.5 miles. You can take a western detour at the bottom of the loop for almost a half mile, leading to the campgrounds.
Snowshoers should hike to the left or right of the cross-country ski trails and yield to skiers. Park rangers say you can snowshoe anywhere in the park, just not directly on the ski trails. And be especially cautious in
the vicinity of the bluffs. Do not go anywhere west of the bluff trail as it is extremely dangerous.
Snowshoeing is especially delightful within the town site, since there is a wide trail that circumnavigates the Fayette peninsula with many historic buildings and ruins along the way. I especially enjoyed looking into a window of the abandoned superintendent's house. It is the only painted building – a pleasing little yellow house.
How to get there
To find this winter gem, take U.S. Highway 2 to Garden Corners, between Escanaba and Manistique, and then go south on M-183 for 17 miles. The main road into the park is plowed to the parking lot and down to the campground ending at the pit toilet. This is quite convenient since no other facilities are open in the winter.
The daily park fee is $6 for Michigan residents and $8 for non-residents. Since there were no rangers at the
contact station during my winter visit, I simply put $8 in an envelope and deposited it in the fee box. Yearly park stickers are $24 for state residents and $29 for non-residents. Purchase a yearly sticker and you can snowshoe at many Michigan state parks. For information about Fayette Historic State Park, call 906/644-2603.
When exploring history, the distance you snowshoe doesn't really matter. The quality of the snowshoe hike
is what counts. Truly, Upper Michigan's Fayette Historic State Park is well worth strapping on those 'shoes.
Jim Joque is coordinator of disability services for the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point. He is also an adventure education instructor teaching courses on camping, backpacking and snowshoeing, and a trip leader for the university's wilderness orientation program. Joque currently serves as education director for the United States Snowshoe Association.
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