Fayette State Park

 Nine miles west on US-2 to Garden Corners, South on 183 approximately 17 miles to Fayette.

Named after Fayette Brown, the Jackson Iron Company agent who chose the site, Fayette was once one of the Upper Peninsula’s most productive iron-smelting operations.  Located on the Garden Peninsula at Snail Shell Harbor, Fayette grew up around two blast furnaces, a large dock and several charcoal kilns after the Civil War.  Nearly five hundred residents-many immigrating from Canada, the British Isles and northern Europe- lived in or near the town that existed to make pig iron.  During twenty-four years of operation, Fayette’s blast furnaces produced a total of 229,288 tons of iron, using local hardwood forests for fuel and quarrying limestone from the bluffs to purify the iron ore.  As the charcoal iron market began to decline, the Jackson Iron Company closed its Fayette smelting operation in 1891.