Emerson

Once a thriving hub of pine lumbering, Emerson is now a fishing hamlet. Just one mile south of the mouth of the Tahquamenon River (immortalized in Longfellow’s poem “Hiawatha”), this settlement overlooks picturesque Whitefish Bay. The village was founded by Kurt Emerson, a lumberman from the Saginaw Bay area, in the 1880s. Emerson erected a sawmill and in 1884 sold his establishment to the Chesbrough Lumber Company. Milling and lumbering operations ceased in 1912, at which time commercial fishing became the economic bulwark of the community.