The Nearest Faraway Place
The first-time visitor to Port Hope, Michigan might ask why, in a park in the middle of town, there’s a brick chimney over a hundred feet tall, with no buildings near it.To get the answer, the visitor would have to return to 1855, when William H. Stafford founded Port Hope He operated a flour mill and grain elevator, a saw mill, and a planing mill in the village 68 miles north of Port Huron.
At the time, lumber was Michigan’s growth industry. In Michigan’s Thumb, logs were cut and floated down the Cass River to Saginaw for milling, or hauled in wagons to Lake Huron port towns such as Port Hope. White pine, now Michigan’s state tree, was the most desirable. The logs were light and floated well, the wood durable and easily milled. Between 1869 and 1900, Michigan was the nation’s leading lumber producing state.
From October 8 through 10, 1871, wildfires burned in a triangular area bordered by Chicago on the south, Peshtigo, Wisconsin on the north, and Michigan’s Thumb to the east. The Thumb fire was believed to be many smaller fires set to clear land, some that had burned for weeks, whipped into one by the wind. The abundance of “slash” – branches cut from logs, and brush from cleared land – left in stacks to dry is also blamed. Another theory centers on a comet-asteroid collision, and chunks of rock, hot after falling through the earth’s atmosphere, scattering over the affected areas.
In September 1881, another fire scorched over a million acres in eastern Michigan, from Flint to Saginaw to the Thumb. In rural areas, there wasn’t anything to do except get out of the way and wait until it burned itself out. The fire claimed over two hundred lives, including several entire families.
Among the structures lost to the two fires were William Stafford’s mills. The chimney is all that survived. It stands in Stafford Park, on the lakefront. From Main Street – M-25 – take either Portland Street or State Street to Huron Street, and turn left to the park.
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