Consumers Power Company announced the construction of a nuclear power plant at Big Rock Point on Lake Michigan four miles northeast of Charlevoix on June 19, 1959. It was the first nuclear plant in Michigan, and the fifth commercial nuclear plant in the United States.

Ground was broken on April 25, 1960. Construction would proceed for the next twenty-nine months on time and on budget--$27,762,000. Of the approximately 600 acres purchased for the project, only 20 would see construction on them, and only 12 had any amount of radiological work done on them. 99 percent of the property never showed contamination from the plant.