PEQUAMING

Region: Keweenaw Peninsula

Baraga County Tourist & Recreation Assoc.

Henry Ford built this sizable bungalow after purchasing the entire peninsula and creating a sawmill here. Reflecting his nostalgia for pre-industrial society, Ford taught locals English dances on the porch. Its present owners no longer allow visitors to walk around and view the historic place.

In the 1870s Englishman Charles Hebard built a town on this distinctive mushroom-shaped peninsula, called a tombolo, jutting out into Keweenaw Bay. (Water currents can form a tombolo by joining an island to the mainland with a sandbar that enlarges.) The community Hebard created was unique in the Upper Peninsula---a version of an English village, complete with oak-shaded streets, board sidewalks, wide lawns with shingled homes, and a Gothic-style church.

The ruins of Ford's sawmill powerhouse, now a seagull roost, is one of peninsula's more interesting sights. With no restaurant or tavern and most of the coastline private residences, Pequaming is no longer all that interesting a place ot visit.

Today it takes a practiced eye to discover vestiges of Hebard's Pequaming. Hebard and his son built and operated a Pequaming sawmill and an even larger one in L'Anse, where Celotex is today. In 1913 Hebard also built for himself a large, secluded bungalow on Keweenaw Bay.

Eleven years later Henry Ford bought the entire Pequaming peninsula; remodeled the town; and had the sawmill provide flooring for Ford floorboards, truck boxes, and wood panels for station wagons. He used the bungalow for a few days each summer and for "household arts training" for local children during the school year, according to Ford Bryan's Beyond the Model T: The Other Ventures of Henry Ford. Today the Ford Bungalow (906-524-7595) can be rented for reunions and such. It sleeps up to 20.

After the Ford era, Pequaming languished to the point that it was mistakenly considered a ghost town. But today it has the look of a resort and retirement community of more recent vintage. Homes are being built by people commuting to L'Anse. The water tower and some buildings from the old sawmill complex remain, privately owned by the people who operate the boat launch and Pequaming Marina (906-524-6413) with its transient slips.

A pleasant place to picnic and swim is the Second Sand Beach Park on the northeast shore of the peninsula. To reach Pequaming, follow Front Street northwest from downtown L'Anse.

Return to Keweenaw Peninsula

PLACES AROUND PEQUAMING TO

Eat Sleep Camp