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Mackinac County MI |
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At first glance Gould City has a bit of a
ghost town look. Most of the few remaining buiIdings along its main street and former business strip are vacant. The village began in 1886 when Lumberman Sam Stites built his mill, house and store out of logs near the old highway that preceded US-2. The MSP & SSM (later the SOO Line) railroad came in the following year and Gould City developed into a town of nearly 200 by the turn of the century. Lumbering continued until 1930 and several fisheries at nearby Scotts Point provided a secondary industry. Stites had the village named after one of the areas commercial fishermen.
By 1905 Gould City became a station on the railroad when the depot was moved from the town of Corrine. The village had two hotels, one operated by Roderick Lyman and the other by Charles May, a State representative. There were three stores and four other mills besides the one Stites built where the railroad line was being laid. There were railroad spurs to each of the mills. One mill was owned by Harry Salter who had lumber camps east of the village. Salters still lives in the area. Archibald McEachern had a lumber mill and Robinson and Freeman had a shingle mill behind their general store. The town had an elementary school and two churches. Gould City was booming into the 1920’s, reaching a peak population of 300. Its first big setback came when half the business district burned to the ground in 1929. This included the Lyman hotel, several stores and other busincesses. Most of these buildings were never rebuilt because Gould City mills were on the verge of exhausting their timber supply. The town slowly declined at first, surviving with the help of its shingle making and pulpwood operations. A nearly fatal blow was dealt when the new US-2 highway was built in the late 1930’s, making the old road west from Gould to Manistique less traveled. This eventually led to the demise of the nearby village of Corrine and almost did Gould City in too.
Gould City has survived all these years but might have been gone for good aftcr 1970 if it weren’ t for additional road improvements and its attraction as a quiet country community and a good place to retire. Today there arc approximately 100 residents. As recently as 1938 Gould City dedicated a new high school but it was closed in the mid-l950’s. A small Presbyterian Church from the 1890’s remains in the village. The Catholic church was damaged in 1971 and was torn down by 1980.
The center of activity in the villagc is McNeils Bar built on the former site of the May Hotel. McNeil’s is also a bit of a museum of the town’s history, with a gallery of photos of scenes, people and buildings from Gould Cities earliest days. The only other business, the former Midnight Thunderbird Bar, is an art gallery. Trains, mostly loaded with logs for paper mills, go through town three or four times a day, but the depot was closed in 1950. The Odd Fellows Hall burned in 1947 and Mrs. Parkers dry goods store from 1905 was torn down in 1988. Among the oldest residents are Verna Ingalls and Charles Marshall, both in their eighties. Marshall is the grandson of Rod Lyman. One thing in Gould City that hasn’t changed is the post office which has remained opcn since its first day in 1888.
Contributed by Paul Petosky
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