Like many other ghost towns throughout northern Michigan, the town of Wildwood, about eight miles southwest of Indian River in Cheboygan County, flourished for a decade during the lumbering era in the late 1800s.

The year was 1875. William Stone was toiling away in Petoskey trying to run a mill. The mill burned down. He had to find another way to feed his family.

Stone, a Union Army veteran of the Civil War, had been awarded a homestead grant in the middle of the wild woods, not far from the old Native American “Mackinac” Trail. To get to his land, William had to walk twelve miles east from Petoskey. When he arrived at the site, he found it was totally forested with tall, stately trees. His homestead consisted of a quarter section of land that would become his property if he developed and lived on it for five years.

William knew he faced a massive task clearing the land and building a home and farm. William had survived great hardships during his life, including fighting in the war. But now, William and his wife Jeanette were the first settlers in what would become the village of Wildwood. William and his wife arrived with their family in October of 1875. They made their trip with two wagons, cutting a trail as they went. They arrived in a heavy snowstorm and pitched a tent for the night.

William built a home into the side of a hillside. It was braced on the inside by a long frame. The house had one room and one small window. They had a wood stove to keep them warm. They lived in this house for the winter. They didn’t see any other people.

When spring came, William started work on a 20-foot by 30-foot two-story frame home. Soon, other homesteaders arrived and built their own homes and farms. Unfortunately, the land lacked the minerals needed for successful agriculture, so the farms failed. But it didn’t mean the end of the community.

Soon after, lumbering interests arrived to begin harvesting trees. Lumbering provided many jobs. Wildwood village was soon thriving. In 1878, the Michigan state road (near today’s M-27 highway) reached Wildwood. A horse-drawn wagon made regular trips to Wildwood, carrying mail, passengers and freight.

Lumbering began in earnest in the 1880s. Wildwood was in a valley nested among towering white pine. There was an abundance of basswood trees, important to the booming furniture industry in Grand Rapids and to a barrel-maker in Cheboygan. Bird’s eye maple was shipped to New York where it was used to make veneer for furniture.

Within a short time, two million board feet of hardwood timber had been harvested from the 160 acres in the northwest quarter of section 7 alone. Wildwood soon had nearly 80 families.

Mrs. Stone became the first teacher when she opened a school in her home. The village built a schoolhouse in 1882. It had two front doors, one for the boys and one for the girls.

Wildwood became a flourishing lumber town. It had two sawmills, rail service, a general store (owned by John Marshall Treadwell), a post office in the store, a grist mill, a blacksmith shop, a stagecoach stop, a boarding house, a church and the school.

Like many other towns in northern Michigan and the Upper Peninsula, Wildwood’s prosperity was doomed to end. The supply of lumber was exhausted. The area’s soil still would not support agriculture. The formerly beautiful and majestic trees that had grown for centuries were now all stumps.

Wildwood began to die. One of the first settlers to give up was the founder, William Stone and his family. By 1890, Wildwood valley was practically deserted and became a ghost town after just a few years.

Wildwood is just a memory today. All that’s left is Wildwood Road, Wildwood Lake, a few houses and an old church.

Not all is bad news, though. The area features one of the best cross-country skiing, hiking and mountain biking trail networks in Michigan (Wildwood Hills Pathway). Descendants of a family that lived in Wildwood, the Burr and Ross Treadwell families, have a letter that was sent to Wildwood in 1904. The letter was mailed with a two-cent stamp! It’s one of the last historical objects with a tie to historic Wildwood.

Many people are not aware Wildwood existed! I am glad to share the story with my readers.