Grindstone City: Where the Thumb Cut Its Teeth
This rare photo, titled “Stone Mill, Grindstone City, Mich.”, captures the peak of Michigan’s grindstone industry at the turn of the 20th century. Grindstone City, located near the tip of the Thumb, was once the largest producer of natural abrasive stones in the U.S. The visible cylindrical stones stacked along the shore were quarried from the area’s rich Marshall Sandstone, known for its ideal grain and durability.
The mills—including the massive Wallace Mill completed in 1887—hummed with activity as workers cut, shaped, and finished stones used in farming, factories, and kitchens across the country. The image shows a bustling shoreline lined with buildings, cranes, and piles of finished grindstones awaiting shipment, likely from the adjacent Lake Huron docks. This photograph, housed in the David V. Tinder Collection of Michigan Photography at the University of Michigan’s Bentley Historical Library, documents a vanished era when the region’s bedrock fueled a global trade—and helped put Grindstone City on the map.
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