🏚️ Pere Cheney, Michigan

Pere Cheney, also called Cheney and Center Plains, was a village located in Crawford County, Michigan in the late 19th century. It is located in Beaver Creek Township and was once a small lumbering town. Pere Cheney was the first community in Crawford County, Michigan and was established by lumberjacks who trailed the Jackson, Lansing and Saginaw Railroad north headed for Mackinaw City. Established in 1874 around the sawmill of George M. Cheney, it served as the temporary county seat when Crawford County was officially organized in 1879, though it soon lost this distinction to the more heavily populated town of Grayling. It had a station on the Michigan Central Railroad called the Cheney depot, and a post office. The post office closed in 1912, and the village was abandoned in the early Twentieth century. It has since taken on the reputation of a ghost town.