Ghost towns—sometimes called “boomtowns”—were formerly bustling communities where a natural resource, such as gold, was exploited and subsequently depleted, then the town was quickly abandoned. Most people are aware of Wild West ghost towns, such as California’s famous Tombstone or Bodie, but they are generally unaware of northern Michigan’s host of ghost towns, built not upon gold but timber. Aral is one such Michigan ghost town. If you ever put on your bathing suit to swim at Otter Creek/the dead end of Esch Road, just off M-22 in the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, you have driven past the old schoolhouse and continued down the main street of that ghost town to the beach, and you just did not know it.
