The quiet own of Benton Harbor, Michigan, and its sister city of St. Joseph – separated by the St. Joseph River – lie on the shores of Lake Michigan in the extreme southwestern corner of the Lower Peninsula. Now typical bedroom communities, these Berrien County towns were once popular beach destinations. The area also had a more sinister reputation, though – as a Michigan mob hangout. We think you’ll find this story as fascinating as we do.

Benton Harbor, Michigan is located approximately 50 miles west of Kalamazoo.
Michigan Municipal League/Flickr
Today Benton Harbor is known for its historic downtown.
If you love lighthouses, you'll find a beautiful one here.
Russell Sekeet/Flickr
The distinctive Benton Harbor-St. Joseph Lighthouse, definitely one of the most beautiful lighthouses in Michigan, marks the scenic shoreline where the St. Joseph River - which divides the sister cities - empties into Lake Michigan.
The area was once a popular spot for vacationers.
Boston Public Library/Flickr
Most of them came primarily from Kalamazoo and Chicago.

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It also attracted a large number of Italian immigrants.
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FotoGuy 49057/Flickr
Many of them were pillars of society who helped to build Berrien County into what it is today. Others, apparently, fell in with the wrong crowd.
Sebastiano Domingo, a Sicilian immigrant, and his family lived on a farm near Benton Harbor. The Domingo family became involved in bootlegging during Prohibition.
Historica Wiki/CC-BY-SA
In the early 1920s, 1927 to be exact, Sebastiano’s sister-in-law, Mary, was killed when the car she was driving exploded from a bomb likely intended for his brother, Tony. This incident spurred Tony and Sebastiano to seek revenge. From there, Sebastiano fell in with organized crime and became a hit man known as “Buster from Chicago.”
Domingo worked for a mob boss named Salvatore Maranzano, an immigrant from the same Sicilian town as Domingo.
Chicago Bureau/Wikimedia Commons
Chicago mobster Al Capone also allied himself with Maranzano in what came to be known as the “Castellammare Wars,” a reference to the Sicilian hometown of both Domingo and Maranzano.
Capone was known for ruthlessly consolidating his power in Chicago through a 1929 mass killing known as the “Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre.” One of Capone’s shooters in the massacre was Fred “Killer” Burke, who fled to Berrien County to lay low after the massacre.
Berrien County Sheriff/Wikimedia Commons
While drunk in St. Joseph, Burke was involved in a minor traffic accident. Paranoid, he shot and killed a police officer who attempted to intervene. Burke was eventually tried for murder in Berrien County and imprisoned at the Marquette State Prison, one of several now historic Michigan prisons. where he died in 1940.

Today, fortunately, the Benton Harbor area is no longer the haven for mobsters it once was. In fact, it’s now a gateway community for nearby Indiana Dunes National Park, one of the nation’s newest, located less than an hour down the lakeshore. Michiganders can enjoy an even wilder version of the same landscape in their own NPS unit, Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, which is about four hours north of Benton Harbor.

To learn more about the city, visit the Benton Harbor website.

Have you visited the Benton Harbor area? Were you aware of its reputation as a Michigan Mob hangout? Let us know in the comments!

If you’d like to explore hikes around any of these historic towns, you can find some great trails by going to the overall AllTrails website.

If you’re still in the mood for more Michigan adventures, take a look at this video about the Haunted Felt Mansion:

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