TROUT CREEK

Region: Keweenaw Peninsula

Thick stands of white oak growing in the sandy soil here once made Trout Creek, settled in 1888 just inside Ontonagon County, a bustling lumber town. The village core is a few blocks north of M-28 along the onetime Duluth, South Shore & Atlantic (Soo Line) tracks. The two-story school attests to Trout Creek's former size.
Trout Creek's mill town era, and the years of subsistence agriculture that followed, are long past. The school has consolidated, and pupils are now bussed to Ewen. When the village's tavern burned down a few years ago, it relocated to Bond Falls Flowage south of town, where there was more potential business. (Now it too is closed, an apparent victim of overexpansion.)

However, a loose group of transplants, largely Illinois retirees, worked to reinvigorate community life with some success. The web site, www.therealtroutcreek.org, has information on Trout Creek history, churches, library, and other institutions. Trout Creek has a writers' group and discussion groups about scientific and other topics. Old-timers have not always welcomed these changes. But now the Little Old Schoolhouse restaurant has closed, a real loss to community life.

Trout Creek makes for a pleasant stop for M-28 motorists between Ironwood or Duluth and Marquette. The White Door General Store (906-852-3222) has a vintage interior, from its decades as the Trout Creek Co-op. It was part of the widespread Finnish-American cooperative movement and wholesalers based in Superior, Wisconsin. Its Hawaiian décor reflects the favorite vacation spot of the grocery's owners. Like the restaurant next door, the grocery is both community service and business.

South of town on the south side of M-28, a red antique steam engine with a 4' flywheel is the centerpiece of Interior Township's Abbott Fox Community Park. There's also a pavilion, play equipment, and grills. The 1912 Reynolds-Corliss Steam Engine first powered flour milling in Minneapolis, but from 1921 to 1968 it operated in here at the Weidman Lumber Company, later Abbott Fox Lumber, north of the park across M-28.

In late 2005 Interior Township became faced with a massive land use and development issue as UPPCO (Upper Peninsula Power) announced the sale of many of its U.P. holdings, including miles of undeveloped waterfront along Bond Falls Flowage, to a land development company which expects to subdivide it for use as recreational property and vacation homes.

EASTERN TIME: Paulding and Trout Creek are on Eastern Time, an hour earlier than Central Time in Watersmeet and Land O'Lakes, because they are in Ontonagon County.

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PLACES AROUND TROUT CREEK TO

Eat Sleep Camp