Pauline is the Northern Michigan Mining Ghost Town No One Remembers

Northern Michigan is particularly well known for its ghost towns, remnants of the mining industry around Houghton and the Keweenaw Peninsula. But the story of Pauline, Michigan, is the story of a town no one remembers.

The first rumblings of Pauline surfaced on the Michigan discussion board of reddit when a poster commented that he remembered visiting northern Michigan as a child and visiting the area known as Pauline. The community was located somewhere south of Houghton and only accessible via logging roads.

Jake, a bar owner, shared this story:

Jake told us about a ghost town I believe the name was Pauline. As I remember it Pauline was north-west of Twin Lakes and you had to take some logging roads to get there. the houses were still in relatively decent shape and there was what looked like a played out copper mine on a hill basically at the end of the main street. Inside the mine building, there was a really deep dark hole with no cover or railings. Is there anybody on here that is from the area that has heard of or been to "Pauline"? I know it was there 25-30 years ago but I can't find any kind of listing or mentions of it anywhere. I was there with about 5-6 other guys and they remember it too so I'm pretty sure it's not a figment of my imagination.

Digging deeper, the location is said to be somewhere off M-26 between Toivola and Lake Superior's Misery Bay. But Google Earth fly-overs of the area long Misery Bay Road though rural Houghton and Ontonagon Counties don't appear to reveal any lost town sites.

So what is the story of the lost town of Pauline? Was it just fuzzy memory or is there, somewhere in the Yooper wilderness, a grouping of houses and mine entrance has that truly been lost to time and history?

Note: the photo that accompanies this story is not Pauline, but rather Fayette, a ghost town, now state park, in the southern Upper Peninsula nestled on the shores of Big Bay de Noc.

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