As a young man, Mario Calcaterra of St. Ignace displays his brute strength, lifting a large log over his head at the Brevort sand dunes. A longtime construction engineer who built many roads in the area, Mr. Calcaterra died in St. Ignace last week at the age of 101. (Photograph courtesy of Mary Lou McKinnon) 115 Years Ago

The St. Ignace News

Saturday, December 26, 1891

John Chambers, senior member of the firm J. Chambers & Bros., died at Colorado Springs, Colorado, Sunday morning, December 29, after a long and lingering illness extending over many years. His brother, Mayor Chambers, was with him at the time, and brought the remains to St. Ignace. He was 45 years old, having been born in Ireland, settling in Mackinac County when he was a mere child with his parents.

Tin, iron, and wooden toys at S. Farrell’s, very cheap.

Naubinway now has a cornet band and under the leadership of Prof. Gaukel, formerly of Cheboygan, it is progressing finely.

Apartial test of the electric light plant was made Thursday evening and last night as lights were burning.... Still better service may be expected when the proper carbons arrive.

A man loads ice cut from Lake Huron into a rear entrance to the Fenlon Brothers Store in Hessel in this undated photograph. Ice was kept throughout the year by packing it in sawdust or straw in insulated ice houses. The Hessel Bay Inn is now on that site, with Pickle Point and the Islander Bar now housed in the buildings next door. A cow is just visible moving out of view on the left. (Photograph courtesy of Les Cheneaux Historical Association) Every individual owes obedience to something, and there can be no obedience without authority. Indeed, freedom, rightly understood, imposes the most solemn obligations of all. When no human control binds a man, he is bound with the greater stress to obey the right to bow to the authority of conscience, to live up to his highest ideal.

90 Years Ago

The St. Ignace Enterprise

Thursday, December 27, 1916

With the advent of winter come the worries and cares occasioned by the poor train services of the Michigan Central, affecting the entire upper peninsula. Monday evening the north-bound train was three hours late, Tuesday evening one-and-a-half hours late, and Wednesday morning five-and-ahalf hours behind. No connections were made at the straits, all mails being delayed from 12 to 24 hours. The cause of the delay in each instance is given as derailments.

The Sainte Marie, the old car ferry that was in service between St. Ignace and Mackinaw City, will be made into a transport barge for T.L. Durocher, the contractor for the breakwater extension in Marquette harbor, says The Mining Journal.

Advertisement - Man, past 30 with horse and buggy, to sell Stock Condition Powder in Mackinac County. Salary, $70 per month. Address is 9 Industrial Bldg., Indianapolis, Indiana.

The Fox was a gasoline boat built at the ship yards in Naubinway in 1908 and had been in commission for the last eight years. Now, she lies a wreck on the rock shores of Naubinway.

Cigar and tobacco dealers are learning that they will not be asked to pay the extra “war tax” revenues that they were compelled to meet last year because the licenses formerly required of dealers to do so will expire and they do not have to be renewed.

50 Years Ago

The Republican-News &

St. Ignace Enterprise

Thursday, December 27, 1956

Several members of the Prentiss M. Brown family will be in California next week to be on hand for the Rose Bowl game when sonin law Forest Evashevski’s Iowa team will play Oregon State’s great team of the west coast at Pasadena.

Catherine Ann Welcher was born early in the morning of December 19 aboard a Coast Guard boat in the Straits of Mackinac enroute from Mackinac Island to St. Ignace. She is the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. John Welcher of Mackinac Island and granddaughter of Mrs. Delia Welcher, principal of the Hessel school.

Winter’s icy blasts have halted 1956 construction work on the $100 million Mackinac Bridge by U.S. Steel’s American Bridge Division. Construction is about three-fours complete.

Two women and two men were injured, a deer was killed, and autos suffered property damage in motor vehicle accidents near here during the past week.

35 Years Ago

The Republican-News &

St. Ignace Enterprise Thursday, December 30, 1971

The year 1971 will be long remembered at the Mackinac Bridge as the year of unusual and bizarre events, according to Prentiss M. Brown, chairman of the Mackinac Bridge Authority, in the review of the past 12 months.

“We thought it was extraordinary when a camper slid off a pickup truck and the driver did not realize what happened until he reached his destination some 80 miles away. There was no damage to either the camper or the bridge. It was a somewhat chagrined owner who returned three hours later inquiring about a lost camper.

“However, if we thought this was an embarrassing situation, consider the Canadian who came north across the bridge one night, only to receive a message from our fare collector that he had left his wife at a filling station in Mackinaw City.”

This year was also the first time in the bridge’s history the number of vehicles crossing the bridge went over the two million mark.

First delivery of pulpwood to the new Mead Publishing Center’s woodyard at Trout Lake was made on December 21 by Karl Kalnbach of Newberry. The yard is one of seven being created across the Upper Peninsulas by the Mead

Corporation to handle wood for the pulp mill which will start operating at Escanaba next spring.

Getting off to a belated and somewhat hurried start, the Kiwanis are conducting their holiday ski school at the newly created ski hill at Dune Shores.

Current project of the Boy Scouts (in Cedarville) is the building and maintenance of an ice rink adjacent to the Cedarville Youth Center.

15 Years Ago

The St. Ignace News

Thursday, December 26, 1991

St. Ignace area students got two days off last week, but under circumstances

most of them would rather have avoided. School administrators called off classes Tuesday and Wednesday, December 17 and 18, because students and teachers were “dropping like flies” from a flu-like illness, said Superintendent Fred Stearns.

St. Ignace’s Downtown Development Authority has decided to bear with developers who plan condominiums and a marina on Mill Slip Point despite slim chances that a proposed breakwater and public boat slips there ever will become reality.

Cedarville’s new Comfort Inn will open for business January 2.