The Rise and Fall of Michigan's Hell Town in the Pines: Seney

In 1881, a railroad stop in Michigan's Upper Peninsula was named for a New York banker who never visited it. Within a year, lumber companies arrived to harvest the white pine, and the settlement of Seney exploded to three thousand people — ten hotels, fourteen saloons, and a reputation as the most dangerous town in Michigan. Lumberjacks earning a dollar seventy-five a day spent their wages in gambling dens, bawdy houses, and bars run by men with names like Snapjaw Small and Stub Foot O'Donnell. A deadly saloon feud made national headlines. A quiet railroad worker left town and later assassinated President McKinley. A twenty-four-year-old doctor arrived to find he was the only physician for fifty miles in any direction; he eventually became a congressman. Then the pine ran out, the companies left, and the population collapsed. In 1919, a young Ernest Hemingway stepped off the train, found nothing but abandoned buildings and a burned hotel foundation, and turned the ruins into one of the greatest short stories in American literature. The land was drained, sold to farmers on false promises, and abandoned again — until the federal government turned it into a wildlife refuge. The town that was called Hell became a sanctuary for migratory birds. Sources Jack Jobst, "Hemingway in Seney," Michigan History (November/December 1990) Schoolcraft County Historical Society / Pioneer Tribune, "Looking back: Seney's wild lumberjack era" (March 2022) Frederic Svoboda, "Landscapes Real and Imagined: 'Big Two-Hearted River,'" Michigan Hemingway Society U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Seney National Wildlife Refuge Comprehensive Conservation Plan Brownstoner, "Mr. Seney's Hospital" and "Past and Present: The Seney Hospital" — George Ingraham Seney banking history U.S. House of Representatives, Biographical Directory — Frank P. Bohn and Russell A. Alger records