Triumph & Tragedy: The Town of Chase in Lake County
The cool little historic village of Chase still exists in Lake County but is considered to be a 'shadow', or 'ghost' town.
The first settler here was Lorenzo Conklin in 1862. There is some confusion as to the original town name, some stating ‘Greendale’, others as ‘Grendale’, and another as ‘Green Dell’. However, when a post office was implemented in 1872, it became known as ‘Chase’, named after the governor of Ohio, Salmon Portland Chase.
In 1869, three major businesses popped up: a broom handle factory, sawmill, and shingle mill.
By 1872 Chase had a total of ten families and thanks to Michigan's burgeoning logging industry, Chase grew to around 1,000 people by the mid-1880s. The town eventually had a blacksmith; boot & shoe establishment; two churches; dry goods; general store; gunsmith; hotel; post office; two sawmills; public school and a lumber & lath shop.
As with almost all of the lumber towns of northern Michigan, Chase also lost much of its population when the logging industry slowed down.
And like many old Michigan towns, Chase had its tragedy. On June 2, 1910, a train wreck occurred when the summer heat caused the rails to expand, causing a derailment on the Pere Marquette railroad, a mile west of town. The train was not going fast enough for a pileup, and train staff made an attempt to get the cars back on track. For some reason, no danger alert was signaled and along comes a freight train. There was a crash, killing the brakeman and severely scalding the conductor.
Today, Chase still has a few old buildings left standing; the best one being an old two-story brick building at the intersection of US-10 and S. Depot Road.
Chase remains the only village in all of Chase Township that has a population of any significance, with only a few hundred people.