BELLEVILLE LAKE, Mich. – Did you know there’s a city in Michigan that’s actually underneath a lake?
Michigan is home to many ghost towns -- some are buried under sand, some are believed to be cursed, and some are underwater. No, I’m not talking about a home for the rumored mermen of Lake Superior, but something much closer to our area.
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Rawsonville was an above-ground trading city on the Huron River between Detroit and Ann Arbor. It was founded in the early 1800′s as Snow’s Landing before it was renamed Rawsonville in 1836. The community peaked during the Civil War and featured sawmills, copper shops, a stove factory, a wagon maker, and multiple saloons and general stores. Using barges and boats, the city was able to ship goods up and down the Huron River. It had a larger population than Ann Arbor or Ypsilanti at the time.
Following the Civil War, Michigan’s railroad network expanded significantly. Despite its successful track record, Rawsonville was not invited to the train party. Its businesses were derailed and it quickly started losing people.
In 1910, the Detroit Edison Company purchased land to build a hydroelectric dam on the Huron River in Van Buren Township, just a few miles east of Rawsonville. When completed in 1925, the French Landing Dam created Belleville Lake, submerging most of Rawsonville.
Its carp, perch and bass population spiked significantly following this period.
The website What Shall we Weird? did a deep dive on Rawsonville, compiling maps and researching how much of Rawsonville would have been lost to Belleville Lake. They concluded that most of the structures that would have existed where Belleville Lake sits would have likely been abandoned or fallen down before the creation of the dam.
“There is neither a long-forgotten street network nor a scattering of old foundations, hidden under the water,” they write. “There is only sand, silt, and snapping turtles.”
Today, Rawsonville is known best as the road that separates Van Buren and Ypsilanti townships or the small neighborhood just south of I-94, near the Ford Lake Dam. The former town is honored with a Michigan Historical Marker that sits along the lake.
“Rawsonville, now a ghost town, was once a thriving village. On September 13, 1823, the first land patent in Van Buren Township was given to Henry Snow for this site, which was soon known as Snow’s Landing.
Called Rawsonville by 1838, the community reached its peak around the time of the Civil War. It then boasted sawmills, gristmill, two cooper shops, a stove factory, several drygoods and general stores, a wagon maker and three saloons.
Rawsonville’s failure to attract railroad service led to its decline. By the 1880s many of its businesses and mills had closed and its residents were moving away. In 1925 a dam erected on the Huron River covered most of the remaining structures with the newly-formed Belleville Lake.”
Michigan Historic Site plaque
