Tower is a village in Cheboygan County. It was initially settled because it was located on the Black River and lumbering was taking place there. From this site, logs could be floated to Cheboygan lumber mills. It also helped that Tower was a station for the Detroit and Mackinaw Railroad. 

Tower was named for the daughter of Samuel S. Tower, who was a resident in that area. His daughter was a volunteer nurse in the Spanish American War. She caught typhoid fever while nursing and she died in 1898. Ellen was the first American woman to die for her country on foreign soil. She was also the first American woman to be honored with full honors in a military funeral. Over 3,000 people attended her funeral. The people of Cheboygan County honored her by naming their village after her in that area. 

Tower was platted in 1899. Soon it had a post office, a general store, a barber shop, hotels, three churches, a school, a dance hall, a fire department with a horse drawn fire truck, and seven saloons. 

By 1910, the settlers had added a bank, a graded school and sawmills that manufactured shingles and staves. There were five sawmills close by that made lumber, handles, butter bowls, and more shingles. Tower had telephones. It was a booming Cheboygan County village. 

A year later, on July 14, 1911, Michigan suffered a huge forest fire which nearly destroyed Tower. At that time roads and trails were covered with sawdust. There was no blacktop or cement. Sawdust was a perfect fuel to spread fires throughout Northeast Michigan. 

It was very hot that day. The temperature reached 100 degrees in the shade. A newspaper showed a man pleading to get into Hell. 

Pleading, “Let me get in! I am looking for a cool spot,” the devil answered, “come in quickly and close the door.”

On July 11, fire and smoke drove half of Tower’s population from the village. They rushed out in every available buggy, carriage, or wagon that was available.

The other half had gone to Cheboygan to see a circus. Lucky them!

Half a dozen men stayed to fight the fire. They did save a huge pile of lumber, a mill, and more. Only eleven cars of the Cheboygan and Mackinaw Railroad were saved.

This fast-spreading fire spread to adjoining Waverly Township, and there was much loss there. 

In South Forest Township, six miles south of Tower, Louis Wilton, my grandfather, his brother, George Wilton, and William Bailey lost their homes and outbuildings. They survived by sitting in boats in the middle of Black River where they watched the fire rage around them. My aunt was there. She told me that it was hell!

George Wilton moved into Onaway. Louis and Bailey rebuilt.

Tower never made a full recovery. The lumber industry was gone. About 18 years later, when our nation’s greatest depression brought everyone to their knees, people lost their jobs everywhere and former Tower residents went there and built pole and tar paper houses. They kept a cow, a couple of pigs, some chickens, and tended a garden in order to survive the Great Depression.

The 1940s brought rural electricity, mail routes, school buses, and better roads to Tower. 

Tower survived, though much smaller, and stands today as a survivor of one of Michigan’s and Cheboygan’s greatest fires. 

In April of 1999, Tower held a centennial celebration. People arrived from all over the state to celebrate and remember life in the booming village at the turn of the century. Carol Rainy made and decorated a two-foot-by-four-foot cake and the people consumed all of it!

On the east edge of Tower lies the well-kept Forest Lawn cemetery. My great grandmother, mother, step-father, and three brothers are buried there. My great grandmother died in 1910, having frozen to death in a sudden storm while gathering firewood. She had no tombstone. I felt that she deserved one, having raised seven sons, including my grandfather, Louis Wilton. I had one made, but no one could tell us where she was buried so that we could set it. I struggled all last summer to identify the spot. At long last the Forest Township clerk found it. God bless Melissa! Great Grandma Mary Ann Wanch has a shiny new tombstone, 111 years late!