From bustling lumber mill to ghost town: New cruise unearths Lake Michigan’s buried history

By Lindsay Moore
Michigan Live
September 4, 2025
Category: Forest History & Archives
Region: United States, US East

SAUGATUCK, Michigan — The folklore goes that there’s an entire town buried beneath the sand dunes of Saugatuck, dubbed “Michigan’s Pompeii.” Do you need to see it to believe it? This new cruise through history will lead you back in time, 150 years ago to the day, to when the town of Singapore was no more. The new event, Cruise Through History – A Singapore Ghost Story, will bring passengers along the Kalamazoo River to hear the lumber legend. …The story begins 189 years ago when Singapore was established and the first mill went up three years later. By 1869, sawmills crowded the Kalamazoo River. The town of Singapore boasted a population of several hundred and was looking to become one of the “grand cities of the west.” The bustling lumber town made a name for itself after the Great Chicago Fire in 1871, when the Singapore sawmills supplied much of the wood used to rebuild the city. 

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