Customer Reviews

Michigan Ghost Towns: Of the Upper Peninsula (Michigan Ghost Towns III)

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This is a good, informative book which is primarily a listing of ghost towns existing in Michigan's misunderstood Upper Peninsula, but also includes pictures and interesting facts about most of the towns. It offers a pretty good history of the region.

I was hoping to photograph some old ghost towns in the U.P. so I felt this book would help direct me to interesting sites. I hate to be so negative about a local topic but it did not even start to meet my expectations. The book is not easy to read even as interesting history. The book will not give you many details on how to find ghost town artifacts. Most of the book details the growth and death of towns. However, most of these are very short in length and are very dry in the telling. Many of the book's details leave off in the early 70's.

I bought this book (6th Reprint, 1996) to use as a reference on a road trip to the Keweenaw Peninsula on the upper peninsula of Michigan. One of the objectives of my trip was to explore some abandoned copper mining towns. The book turned out to be of very limited usefulness, and certainly not a stand-alone guidebook. It provides at least a bit of history (mostly resident names culled from old Post Office records) about each of hundreds of different ghost towns. But there are no maps showing where any particular ghost town is located. Nor is there an index. To look up a particular ghost town, first you need to know which county it's in, since the listings are organized by county (one chapter per county). For most town entries, there's absolutely no description of where they're located; you will need to get that information somewhere else.

For a more concise listing of U.P. ghost towns and their locations, do a web search for Ghost Towns of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.

This is a good, informative book which is primarily a listing of ghost towns existing in Michigan's misunderstood Upper Peninsula, but also includes pictures and interesting facts about most of the towns. It offers a pretty good history of the region.