Singapore, Mi - a ghost town revisited

Singapore, 1936

Did you know there’s a ghost town buried beneath these Lake Michigan dunes?

Near the mouth of the Kalamazoo river under the sand lies Singapore, a once-thriving lumber town on Lake Michigan.

Dollar notes from Singapore, MI

Singapore 1869

Singapore was established in 1837, and boasted 3 lumber mills, 2 hotels, several general stores and even their own bank and currency.

Singapore logging

It was America’s wooden age, & virtually everything was built from wood.

Inevitably in 1871, The Great Chicago Fire decimated 17,500 buildings and 73 miles of street. 90,000 people— 1 in 3 Chicago residents—were left homeless. Only 120 bodies were recovered, less than half they speculate.

Singapore was poised to rebuild the city, and soon the  little lumber town started to rival Milwaukee and Chicago as a primary shipping & lumber port on the Great Lakes.

Stereoscope still of Shivers Bend, view from a high dune on the south bank of the old channel. The village, ships and docks are visible in the upper left of the photo. The tug moored to the pier is probably Shriver Bros.

Unknown, c 1900s

The need for lumber was great, but As the trees came down around Singapore it was no longer protected from the winds. Only 4 years after the fires, Singapore had run out of timber & was utterly abandoned. With the land stripped of resources & without any replanted vegetation or dune grass to stop the process, Mother Nature did her thing.

local legend has it that one man refused to leave his home in the dying town, even as it was slowly buried by sand; Going in and out of an upstairs window until the sand reached the roof. By the end of the century, little was left.

This cautionary tale helped inspire our latest collection; We sourced materials made w recycled ocean plastics & the suits were constructed in a solar powered factory that pays their workers living wages. all designed right here in Michigan.

Today the ghost town is buried under privately owned property so we chose to shoot at a public beach with views of the forgotten town.

With the help of some frighteningly-cute friends & local talent, we explored the dunes, fit tested the new designs and enjoyed the spooky-good, abnormally warm October weather. An eerie reminder of the forces of nature, and what happens when you don’t pay enough attention to them.

Fun Fact: We were able to find some Singapore-era dock pilings extending into Lake Michigan near the original mouth of the Kalamazoo River (see map at top).