Al Capone Traveled Across Michigan to Get to His Canadian Hideout

WARNING: Under no circumstances should you enter this property. By doing so you risk bodily harm and/or prosecution for trespassing on private property.

It seems like no matter where you travel in Michigan – from the Michigan/Ohio border to the tip of the Keweenaw and beyond to Isle Royale – someone from any area will more than likely say something like “oh, yeah, Al Capone used to have a hideout here”. As exciting and adventuresome as those sound, we know that one person can’t be in every county, every township, or any town, village, city, hamlet, or community. If that were true, Capone wouldn’t have any time to commit his crimes. So many of these “Capone stayed here” Michigan rumors can’t ALL be true, although some are.

But there is one place quite a ways northeast of Michigan in Ontario, Canada. Capone is said to travel to the town of Quadeville, where he had a cabin in the woods he and members of his gang used as a hideout. It’s believed he would leave Chicago, travel all the way across Michigan to Detroit, where he would cross over and be driven another 412 miles to his forest hideaway.

This Capone hideout seems to be the most believable, as the tale is corroborated by many historians and locals in the vicinity of Quadeville and beyond. In 1926, Capone was 27 years old when he first used this place as a hideout. Authorities were searching for him after one of his rival gang members was assassinated.

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The dates as to the cabin’s origin differ: one states it as 1926, another as in the 1930s. The secret of the Capone cabin – just off Letterkenney Road - was kept hidden from the public for over forty years. The secret slowly leaked out, but it’s still difficult to find, Driving down Letterkenney Road, you can’t see it at all through all the trees and bushes…even in winter when the leaves are off the trees, and if there ever was a driveway, it’s grown over.

The structure was made to Capone’s specifications with logs, but looks like it has been changed somewhat over the years of various ownerships. Today, the windows are boarded up and broken out, doors open, and initials scratched into the logs by visitors.

Even though this is one of the more plausible and believable of Capone’s getaways, nobody had ever said they saw him in town or in that cabin.

Or they were just too afraid to say.