Pointe Aux Barques Township ( ) is a

civil township A civil township is a widely used unit of local government in the United States that is subordinate to a County (United States), county, most often in the northern and midwestern parts of the country. The term town is used in New England town, Ne ...

of Huron County in the U.S. state of

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, ...

. The population was 15 at the 2020 census. Pointe Aux Barques is located at the tip of

the Thumb The Thumb is a region and a peninsula of the U.S. state of Michigan, so named because the Lower Peninsula of Michigan, Lower Peninsula is shaped like a mitten. The Thumb area is generally considered to be in the Central Michigan region, east of t ...

on the Lower Peninsula. With a permanent population of only 15, the township is the least-populated municipality in the state and the third smallest township by land area after Novi Township and Royal Oak Charter Township.

Communities

*Pointe Aux Barques is an

unincorporated community An unincorporated area is a parcel of land that is not governed by a local general-purpose municipal corporation. (At p. 178.) They may be governed or serviced by an encompassing unit (such as a county) or another branch of the state (such as th ...

within the township at . The name is a French translation of "point of ships" and was named by French sailors as early as 1760. The community had its own post office from June 12, 1897, until June 20, 1957.

Geography

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the township has a total area of , of which is land and is water. The township is located at the northern end of

The Thumb The Thumb is a region and a peninsula of the U.S. state of Michigan, so named because the Lower Peninsula of Michigan, Lower Peninsula is shaped like a mitten. The Thumb area is generally considered to be in the Central Michigan region, east of t ...

Turnip Rock Turnip Rock is a small geological formation in Michigan. It is a Stack (geology), stack located in Lake Huron, in shallow water a few yards offshore, near the rock called the Thumbnail which is the extreme tip of Pointe Aux Barques, a small penins ...

, an undercut

stack Stack may refer to: Places * Stack Island, an island game reserve in Bass Strait, south-eastern Australia, in Tasmania’s Hunter Island Group * Blue Stack Mountains, in Co. Donegal, Ireland People * Stack (surname) (including a list of people ...

, is located just off the shores of the mainland. Surrounded by private property, it is only accessible by water, and there is no public road access. Pointe aux Barques Light bears the name of the township but is located in neighboring Huron Township.

Demographics

As of the

census A census (from Latin ''censere'', 'to assess') is the procedure of systematically acquiring, recording, and calculating population information about the members of a given Statistical population, population, usually displayed in the form of stati ...

of 2020, there were 15 people, 11 households, and 7 families residing in the township. There were 70 housing units, but many of them were units of secondary housing not used by full-time residents.

References

{{authority control Townships in Huron County, Michigan Townships in Michigan Populated places established in 1903 1903 establishments in Michigan Populated places on Lake Huron in the United States