SWANZY began as a wooding station alongside a railroad track from Escanaba to Negaunee.
Originally called Cheshire Junction, and built by the Chicago and Northwestern Railroad around 1865, it served as a stop where wood locomotives could refuel.
A railroad agent was stationed there, along with a section crew which worked the railroad tracks and lived in a section house.
A small settlement grew up. A boarding house and several barns housed overnight loggers, and their horses, procuring supplies for the lumber camps and sawmills dotting the township.
An open pit mine called Swanzy opened in the late 1870s or early 1880s six miles from Cheshire Junction. It produced more than 9,000 tons of iron ore.
However, the ore was too deep for the Cheshire Mining Company to obtain profitably, and by 1884, the mine closed.
The name Swanzy took hold and Cheshire Junction adopted it around 1880. The mining area became known as the Swanzy District.
At around this time, locomotives began using coal rather than wood, and Swanzy was provided with a large coal bin for refuelling the trains.
With a population of 25 to 30, there were no schools in Swanzy. There was, however, a store and a tavern. To make a living the men had to walk in the woods for many miles to fell trees.
At the beginning of this century, the Cleveland-Cliffs Iron Company (CCI) began diamond drilling in the Forsyth Township area searching for ore deposits. Having found sufficient ore bodies, CCI decided to build the town of Gwinn.
The town was to be a model mining community. Its founder, William Gwinn Mather, president of CCI, had studied model mining communities in Europe and Britain, wanting to build a town where his workers and their families could live in a safe, well-designed environment.
Construction of the town began in 1906 with most of the work completed within three years. Gwinn soon became the largest town in the township. Adjacent to and east of Gwinn grew New Swanzy.
New Swanzy, established in 1908, did not have the regulations that model town Gwinn had. Several businessmen from Swanzy saw their future in New Swanzy, where they would not have to spend money adhering to such requirements enforced in Gwinn as having to construct their business premises in fireproof brick. They moved their companies to the new site, four miles away.
The original Swanzy - now called Old Swanzy - began to die. Modern trains no longer needed to stop at Swanzy and by the mid-1920s, after a forest fire, it became a ghost town. Nothing remains there today.
Within two decades, CCI had opened seven iron ore mines. But when the veins of ore ran out they all began to close and the Great Depression hit in 1929.
New Swanzy and Gwinn survived the 1930s and 1940s. From 1955 to 1995, the Sawyer Air Force Base created a stable economic base for both communities.
There are no primary sources which reveal how Swanzy got its name.
The late Frank Farquar, a historian raised in Swanzy and whose mother's family came from the Caernarvon area of North Wales, wrote that Swanzy was named after Swansea.
It is surmised that miners, and possibly surveyors, from Wales worked in the area, and that they named it as a tribute to the Welsh community. No records exist from the period to confirm this but it is known that two surveyors for the railroad alongside of which Swanzy grew were Welshmen - brothers Robert and Young Campbell.
This article, written by Steve Syrja, originally appeared in Planet Swansea which was published by the South Wales Evening Post. Pictures courtesy of the Forsyth Township Historical Society.
Originally called Cheshire Junction, and built by the Chicago and Northwestern Railroad around 1865, it served as a stop where wood locomotives could refuel.
A railroad agent was stationed there, along with a section crew which worked the railroad tracks and lived in a section house.
A small settlement grew up. A boarding house and several barns housed overnight loggers, and their horses, procuring supplies for the lumber camps and sawmills dotting the township.
An open pit mine called Swanzy opened in the late 1870s or early 1880s six miles from Cheshire Junction. It produced more than 9,000 tons of iron ore.
However, the ore was too deep for the Cheshire Mining Company to obtain profitably, and by 1884, the mine closed.
The name Swanzy took hold and Cheshire Junction adopted it around 1880. The mining area became known as the Swanzy District.
At around this time, locomotives began using coal rather than wood, and Swanzy was provided with a large coal bin for refuelling the trains.
With a population of 25 to 30, there were no schools in Swanzy. There was, however, a store and a tavern. To make a living the men had to walk in the woods for many miles to fell trees.
At the beginning of this century, the Cleveland-Cliffs Iron Company (CCI) began diamond drilling in the Forsyth Township area searching for ore deposits. Having found sufficient ore bodies, CCI decided to build the town of Gwinn.
The town was to be a model mining community. Its founder, William Gwinn Mather, president of CCI, had studied model mining communities in Europe and Britain, wanting to build a town where his workers and their families could live in a safe, well-designed environment.
Construction of the town began in 1906 with most of the work completed within three years. Gwinn soon became the largest town in the township. Adjacent to and east of Gwinn grew New Swanzy.
New Swanzy, established in 1908, did not have the regulations that model town Gwinn had. Several businessmen from Swanzy saw their future in New Swanzy, where they would not have to spend money adhering to such requirements enforced in Gwinn as having to construct their business premises in fireproof brick. They moved their companies to the new site, four miles away.
The original Swanzy - now called Old Swanzy - began to die. Modern trains no longer needed to stop at Swanzy and by the mid-1920s, after a forest fire, it became a ghost town. Nothing remains there today.
Within two decades, CCI had opened seven iron ore mines. But when the veins of ore ran out they all began to close and the Great Depression hit in 1929.
New Swanzy and Gwinn survived the 1930s and 1940s. From 1955 to 1995, the Sawyer Air Force Base created a stable economic base for both communities.
There are no primary sources which reveal how Swanzy got its name.
The late Frank Farquar, a historian raised in Swanzy and whose mother's family came from the Caernarvon area of North Wales, wrote that Swanzy was named after Swansea.
It is surmised that miners, and possibly surveyors, from Wales worked in the area, and that they named it as a tribute to the Welsh community. No records exist from the period to confirm this but it is known that two surveyors for the railroad alongside of which Swanzy grew were Welshmen - brothers Robert and Young Campbell.
This article, written by Steve Syrja, originally appeared in Planet Swansea which was published by the South Wales Evening Post. Pictures courtesy of the Forsyth Township Historical Society.
Playing cards.
New Swanzy saloon.
