{"id":389,"slug":"port-oneida-village-port-oneida-michigan","story":[{"heading":null,"paragraphs":["Port Oneida began with a fisherman. Carsten Burfiend left Hanover, Germany, in 1846, worked North Manitou Island fisheries until 1852, then bought 275 acres on the mainland west of Pyramid Point and brought his family over — the first European resident of what became the Port Oneida community. The Werners, relatives by marriage, followed in 1855; by the 1860 census the Pyramid Point neighborhood held 87 people, most of them Hanover and Prussia immigrants."]},{"heading":"Documented history","paragraphs":["The turning point was Thomas Kelderhouse, a Lake Michigan cargo-ship owner who struck a deal with Burfiend: land for a dock. Completed by 1862, the pier served steamers calling for cordwood and cargo, and the settlement took its name from one of the first to tie up — the SS Oneida. Kelderhouse bought land steadily, built a sawmill, and over thirty years the village accumulated a blacksmith shop, boarding house, general store and post office, barns, and the Kelderhouse residence.","By the 1890s the hardwoods were logged off and the steamships had gone to coal; the dock and mill were sold, and Kelderhouse's death in 1884 closed the operation's run. The waterfront village itself was fully abandoned by 1934 — the archive's record concerns that dock townsite specifically, not the surrounding farms, many of which stayed in the same families. Those farmsteads now form the Port Oneida Rural Historic District in Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, roughly 2,000 preserved acres the Park Service describes as the largest such district in the country."]}],"name":"Port Oneida Village","aliases":[],"type":"GHOST_TOWN","type_label":"Ghost Town","cats":["GHOST_TOWN"],"groups":["ghost-towns"],"desc":"Ghost town associated with documented cultural history.","full_desc":"A ghost town in Port Oneida, Michigan, Port Oneida Village is filed here for what the record attaches to it. Ghost town associated with documented cultural history. HauntHunt files it with ghost towns. The dossier holds 1 documented fact — a documented spine with no haunting reports attached. Visitor status is unverified; confirm before making the trip.","address":"Port Oneida Road","city":"Port Oneida","county":null,"state":"Michigan","postal":null,"region":"Midwest","lat":null,"lon":null,"coord_kind":null,"status":"HISTORIC_SITE","access":"UNKNOWN","access_notes":null,"ownership":null,"website":null,"phone":null,"year_built":null,"year_opened":null,"year_closed":1934,"year_demolished":null,"designation":null,"current_use":null,"research_notes":"Record identifies the former dock village, not the entire rural historic district; no blanket abandonment of nearby farms inferred.","stage":"SOURCE_RESEARCH","quality":{"level":"MEDIUM","score":55,"dims":{"location_confidence":0.75,"identity_confidence":0.65,"historical_confidence":0.8,"source_quality":1,"paranormal_claim_provenance":null,"coordinate_confidence":0,"current_access_confidence":0,"freshness":0.65}},"claims":[],"history":[{"description":"Original dock village abandoned by 1934, separate from surrounding farms. The town's documented rise and abandonment is the record the rest of the file stands on. This belongs to the verified spine of the entry, the layer everything else is measured against. The detail is preserved in 'Ghost Towns of Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore'. The record keeps it — history, not lore.","evidence":"HISTORICALLY_VERIFIED","date_start":null,"date_end":null,"confidence":null,"source":{"name":"Ghost Towns of Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore","url":"https://www.nps.gov/slbe/learn/historyculture/ghosttowns.htm","publisher":"National Park Service","type":"GOVERNMENT","authority":1}}],"legends":[],"entities":[],"events":[],"investigations":[],"encounters":[],"media":[],"persons":[],"visitor":{"tour_availability":"Verify before visiting","notes":"Access details are unverified; research before visiting.","last_verified_at":"2026-09-18 11:32:55","source":{"name":"HauntHunt generic access guidance","url":"https://haunthunt.com/about#access-guidance","publisher":"HauntHunt editorial","type":"DIRECTORY","authority":2}},"sources":[{"name":"Ghost Towns of Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore","url":"https://www.nps.gov/slbe/learn/historyculture/ghosttowns.htm","publisher":"National Park Service","type":"GOVERNMENT","authority":1}],"conflicts":[],"wiki":null,"counts":{"claims":0,"history":1,"legends":0,"entities":0,"sources":1}}