Munising

Just spent a couple days in one of the creepiest little towns I’ve yet discovered. Found it on accident some time ago, on my way through the upper peninsula to Marquette, and was somewhat enthralled, though far from enticed. After hours and hours of driving through wilderness, with little to be seen beyond trees and train tracks, all of a sudden I rounded a corner and set my eyes on a massive jutting factory, billowing enormous plumes of smoke from it’s one monstrous stack. The landscape changed immediately, going from rippled dirt country, to canadian rock country, and behind the factory I could spy the deep blue of lake superior.

The road through the town was narrow and patchy, riddled with odd intersections and faded lines, and the entire place was set it what seemed like a large bowl in the rocky wilderness; identical early century row houses built into the hillside, peering down at the factory and business district like sports fans in an over sized stadium. The story of the city was delightfully self evident– the factory bearing the wear and tear of a building constructed around the turn of the century, matching the very nearby houses in sunken disrepair. The business district, which consisted of four small blocks, had old buildings of the same era…and beyond the core of the town circa 70s sleaze motels were littered about, mingling with antiquated tourist traps and bait shops.

I pulled into town and booked a room at the Sydney Motel, which was 100% vacant. The factory could be seen and heard from any point in town, and my bedside window was no exception. It made a noise like a boat engine…a low, churning vibration, and my mind wandered into vicarious mental paths of what it would be like to have grown up in the shadow of the place, surrounded only by a small handful of family and the dark hardness of winter, year after year. I went for a stroll, and wandered into the first of the four main buildings downtown, which turned out to be a library/cafe, and an surprisingly pretty young girl poured me a cup of coffee. It was amazingly cozy, with shelves and shelves of old books, a fireplace, sofas, and a TV tuned to some random local station.

I got to talking to the young girl, and found her about as interesting as I suspected…but she did provide me with a number of tid-bits regarding the area’s veiled underbelly, recommending several little points of interest. The most unusual of these was what she simply referred to as the blast furnace ruins, which apparently was the culprit in the burning destruction of an entire town many many years ago, that was never rebuilt. The ruins of the furnace, however, remained just inside the woods, along the beach, a ways north…and she provided me with the directions. Other attractions included strange rock formations and magnificent waterfalls, spread out among the rocky wilderness of the greater area, all of which I explored.

The furnace ruins turned out to be much more than I suspected. Instead of suddenly coming to a hole in the ground, littered with charred bricks, I discovered I could see the unusual monolith a great distance off, from the shoreline. It was way out towards the tip of a completely wooded point, of sorts, and stuck out from the mass of wilderness like some giant eroded aztec temple. Up close it towered over me, at least three stories in height, and had a number of strange triangular concave "doorways" embedded in each side of the weeded stone structure, all of which simply lead to dirt. 

Pulled over in a bizarre little micro-town called "Christmas" on my way back south the following day, to photograph an actual Sherman Tank that was just sitting in someone’s yard, when a strange dude came by and yelled at me;

"Hey Mr. Cadillac! How we doin’ today?"

"Damn fine, pal, damn fine…"