This late 1800s or early 1900s photo shows one of two long piers then active in Centerville, also called Hika, in Manitowoc County and now part of the village of Cleveland. The visible older pilings indicate evidence of rebuilding over time.
ZACH WOOD
Echoes emerge from long-ago places along Lake Michigan
Imagine, if you will, a thriving shipping town. Dock workers haul cord after cord of wood onto huge schooners destined for Chicago. On shore, goods of all sorts are bought and sold at the general store. Families flock to the area to find work and build lives. Now, imagine that in just a generation or two, it vanishes. It’s as if this place never even existed. Sound like the premise of a maritime-themed episode of “The Twilight Zone”? It’s not — the story is real. And it happened up and down Wisconsin’s Lake Michigan coast. These are Wisconsin’s “ghost ports.”
20 wnrmag.com
BOOM TIMES Like many communities, these port towns developed around economic opportunity. In this case, it was the lumber boom of the mid-1800s. As the nation grew rapidly, so did the demand for lumber for construction, as a fuel source for boats and a heat source for homes. The rush began to get lumber to the shore of Lake Michigan and onto one of the large commercial vessels headed to the lumber yards in Chicago. Ports made that possible, and consequently, they quickly began to dot the Lake Michigan shoreline. Some of the first ports to appear still stand today —