Abandoned Old Church

This place is on private property. Listing for informational purposes only. Please do not visit without express permission from the land owner.

This abandoned church is a reminder of Vandalia's uber-religious past. It's an amazing photo-op for abandoned aficionados.

Vandalia is a village in Penn Township, Cass County in the U.S. state of Michigan. The population was 301 at the 2010 census.

"Vandalia, Michigan had been a remote outpost for resistance politics and church activism for over 150 years. The village today is little more than a flashing yellow caution light on the M-60 where the road dips down to Christiana Creek. There's a Marathon station, officially named the 7 Days Expressmart but usually called Mr. D's after the old owner; Kulesia's restaurant; an old wooden church on Mill Street that's been converted into a pumpkin orange Buddhist temple; a tiny hunting and fishing store and one hundred or so wood-frame houses, some of them nice examples of prairie Victorian. In the shaded halycon otiosity of summer, it's Mayberry all over, an overgrowth of massive maples and old asphalt shingles and derelict Americana. In winter, it's a kind of frozen purgatory of woodsmoke and plastic-covered windows and the discarded stubs from used foodstamps and booklets." - Dean Kuipers, Burning Rainbow Farm.

The county is named for Lewis Cass, the Michigan Territorial Governor at the time the county was created in 1829. Cass later served as the United States Secretary of War under President Andrew Jackson, thus making a case for including Cass County as one of Michigan's "cabinet counties".

After 1840, the black population of Cass County grew rapidly as families were attracted by white defiance of discriminatory laws, by numerous highly supportive Quakers, and by low-priced land. Free and runaway blacks found Cass County a haven. Their good fortune attracted the attention of southern slaveholders. In 1847 and 1849, planters from Bourbon and Boone Counties in northern Kentucky led raids into Cass County to recapture runaway slaves. They were "surrounded by crowds of angry farmers armed with clubs, scythes, and other farm implements", resisting their attempt.

The raids failed to accomplish their objective but strengthened Southern demands for passage of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which was a step on the way to the Civil War.

Cass County became known early on for the anti-slavery attitudes of its population. Pennsylvania Quakers made a settlement in Penn Township in 1829, which later became a prominent station on the Underground Railroad. One established Underground Railroad route ran from Niles through Cassopolis, Schoolcraft, Climax, and Battle Creek, and thence along the old Territorial Road.

According to the United States Census Bureau, the village has a total area of 0.99 square miles (2.56 km2), all of it land.