Chatham, Michigan - 49816

Photos courtesy of:
Ken Huisjen

Chatham is a small agricultural community in Alger County's Rock River Township in Michigan’s upper peninsula.This bedroom community to nearby Munising also derives its economic support from tourism. It has several small businesses and restaurants. It is situated among many small lakes, marshes and streams, including "Slapneck Creek," about a mile to the north, which suggests a component of the local ecology that likely once was a challenge to early settlers!

This area’s first settler was James Finn of Chatham, Ontario, builder of a lumber camp here in 1896. It received a station on the Munising Railway a year later and got a post office. It was developed under the supervision of the president of the Cleveland Cliffs Mining Company, W. G. Mather.