Little Harbor is a former settlement in

Schoolcraft County Schoolcraft County ( ) is a county located in the Upper Peninsula of the U.S. state of Michigan. As of the 2020 census, the population was 8,047, making it Michigan's fourth-least populous county. The county seat is Manistique, which lies al ...

Michigan Michigan ( ) is a peninsular U.S. state, state in the Great Lakes region, Great Lakes region of the Upper Midwest, Upper Midwestern United States. It shares water and land boundaries with Minnesota to the northwest, Wisconsin to the west, ...

, United States, on the north shore of

Lake Michigan Lake Michigan ( ) is one of the five Great Lakes of North America. It is the second-largest of the Great Lakes by volume () and depth () after Lake Superior and the third-largest by surface area (), after Lake Superior and Lake Huron. To the ...

. Little Harbor was located between

Garden A garden is a planned space, usually outdoors, set aside for the cultivation, display, and enjoyment of plants and other forms of nature. The single feature identifying even the wildest wild garden is ''control''. The garden can incorporate bot ...

and

Thompson Thompson may refer to: People * Thompson (surname) * Thompson Lantion, Filipino retired police general * Thompson M. Scoon (1888–1953), New York politician Places Australia * Thompson Beach, South Australia, a locality Bulgaria * Thom ...

on the

Garden Peninsula The Garden Peninsula is a peninsula of in length that extends southwestward into Lake Michigan from the mainland of Michigan's Upper Peninsula. The peninsula is bordered by Lake Michigan on the east, and by Big Bay de Noc on the west. The base o ...

. It was a steam powered sawmill town founded between 1885 and 1887 by Alfred Tracy and William L. Marble (although some fishing cabins existed at the harbor at the time of Meriweathers survey for the

United States Geological Survey The United States Geological Survey (USGS), founded as the Geological Survey, is an agency of the U.S. Department of the Interior whose work spans the disciplines of biology, geography, geology, and hydrology. The agency was founded on Mar ...

in 1848). The entrance to the town is from the southeast with a narrow passage which leads to a natural twenty-foot deep harbor which is protected from all sides. The land entrance was a stairway that led from the bluff to the town site. The town was about three blocks long and consisted of two rows of houses, a boarding house, store, and pool hall. A wharf then went out several hundred feet into the harbor. There was a brick furnace, a sawmill and shingle mill combined. This was a common sawmill at the time because cedar was often mixed with stands of white pine and there was a market for shingles, hardwood flooring and lath as well as dimensional lumber. The logs were cut and brought to the top of the bluff in the winter by a man and team of horses and then rolled down to the live logs skidway. After the economic panic of 1893, the town was sold to Martin Valetine who ran the town for a number of years, finally selling it to Isaac and Bill Bonifas and later to Ben Miller. By this time, the timber was nearly gone and Miller dismantled the mill and stored it on the shore for shipment. The only known

pirate Piracy is an act of robbery or criminal violence by ship or boat-borne attackers upon another ship or a coastal area, typically with the goal of stealing cargo and valuable goods, or taking hostages. Those who conduct acts of piracy are call ...

of the Great Lakes, Dan Seavey, stole all the equipment and sold it. In the early 1900s the town was used as a fishing port but eventually the wharf was washed away and none of the houses remain.

References

*''Our Heritage, Garden Peninsula, Delta County, Michigan; 1840-1980'', published by The Garden Peninsula Historical Society, 1982, first edition, page 56–57. {{Authority control Former populated places in Schoolcraft County, Michigan Ghost towns in Michigan Logging communities in the United States