125 YEARS AGO

St. Ignace News

January 9, 1885

Messrs. Lennon & Harrold have the contract of carrying the mails, passengers, baggage and express. Their barn is well equipped for the work and they are giving satisfaction.

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On Tuesday last one of Lennon & Harrold's teams broke through the ice on the Straits between here and Mackinaw City but finally reached here safely.

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Every person who has crossed the Straits this week has did so with great risk of losing his life. On Tuesday the teams broke through and as the weather has been very mild up to the present time, the risk is now still greater, but still they come and go every day.

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About 30 passengers crossed to Mackinaw City on Wednesday.

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This week we received a communication from Newberry post marked the 3rd, a day earlier than one dated the 1st.

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Stage fare to St. Ignace $5, and $1 additional will buy a round trip ticket. This important reduction, however, has caused no great rush for return tickets, probably for the reason that few care to go over the ground twice in the same year. - Soo Democrat.

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The ice boaters are taking a rest, on account of too much snow for their line of sport.

The beaming countenance of Geo. H. Hombach, is again daily seen at the postoffice wicket, where he will hold fort in future.

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We regret to report that our esteemed friend, Mayor Foley, fell at his store door last evening, receiving very severe injuries. The icy sidewalk caused the mishap.

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The people of Newberry and adjoining towns in Chippewa, Schoolcraft and Mackinac counties will move for the erection of a new county at the coming session of the legislature.

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From Newberry: At the citizens' meeting Friday last at Berdie's, to consider the advisability of forming a new county, Mr. R. F. Berdie was called to preside over the meeting. After hearing from the different citizens, J. H. Sherman and Reyal A. Jenny were appointed committee to ascertain the ins and outs, and communicate with the different parts and parties interested in the proposed new county, and report at a meeting two weeks from Friday.

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Str Algomah left here last Saturday morning, and reached Mackinaw City Monday, disabled. The second engineer started for Detroit after the accident for a shaft coupling, expecting to return in time to get the boat moving again by next Sunday.

85 YEARS AGO

The St. Ignace Enterprise

January 8, 1925

Mackinac county owes much to Fred D. Underwood, who rose from a brakeman to president of the Erie railroad system. It was Underwood who built the Soo Line railroad from Minneapolis to the Soo, and thereby opened up a vast territory to settlement. Before the railroad traversed Mackinac county the scattered settlers in the west end of the county had a hard time of it. During the summer their supplies were taken in by boat to the Lake Michigan shore nearest their homes. In the winter the long trails to St. Ignace and Manistique were used over which to transport whatever was needed for existence. The building of the Soo Line changed all this. Villages sprung up and new settlers opened up the rich agricultural and grazing lands where today they are prosperous and happy. And this is not so long ago, within the memory of hundreds of residents of the county many of whom underwent the hardships attendant upon settling in a wild country with railroad facilities.

There have been many colorful and outstanding achievements on the busy career of F. D. Underwood, this railroad builder, but he considers the birth of the Soo line back in 1888 his "life work." He recalled the days when his office was not in New York skyscraper, but in a tumbled down shack in Minneapolis and modestly told the part he played in blazing an iron trail through the then virgin forests of upper Wisconsin and the Michigan peninsula.

Underwood began his railroad career with the Chicago & Northwestern. He soon transferred his activities to the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul, where his real advancement started, and in 1888 found him a division superintendent.

"The real story of my life work started that year," said Underwood. "It was the building of the backbone of the Soo line."

He related how he resigned his position as superintendent of the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul to become superintendent of construction of the Soo. His task was to build the road.

From Minneapolis, across northern Wisconsin and the upper peninsula of Michigan, for fur years he directed the construction of 350 miles of track under great difficulty. The road was built without a single land grant and ofttimes with out much ready cash. Indians and woodsmen were workers.

As the crews worked through the forests the trees they felled to make way for the track were hewed into ties and bridge timbers to which the steel rails were spiked. There was no road for the pioneer to follow and much of the way there was not even a fair trail that could be used to pack in supplies. Finally the road was completed and the opening ay at hand.

Underwood told of the first through train to leave Minneapolis for the Soo.

"It was drawn by a brand new locomotive," he said. "Two new sleeping cars and a dining care were in the equipment. It came time to go and there was not a paying passenger in sight. The train pulled out without a passenger and completed the trip through without a passenger.

"We had advertised the trains and had to leave on schedule whether there were passengers or not."

Underwood said it was not unusual in the early days of the Soo line for a train to run several hundred miles with but one or two passengers.

"In some cases when we had only one or two passengers, the conductor would tell them after the train ha gone a hundred miles or so that there was a fine hotel at the net town where they could stay over night and see the town at the company's expense," Underwood went on. "The passengers usually accepted the invitation. It was cheaper for us to pay their hotel bills for the night than to run the train through to the end of the line. We would then run the train on a siding and the passengers would be under the impression it had gone on without them."

For a dozen years, Underwood managed the line he had built and saw it extended north and west from Minneapolis as well as east. When the Soo road was built it cost about $20,000 a mile, including rolling stock. It could not be duplicated now for less than $100,000, he estimated.

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The Great Lakes $100,000,000 "steal" is doomed.

Within 60 days the Chicago sanitary district must cease the diversion of 10,000 cubic feet of water per second from lake Michigan through the drainage canal. They will be allowed only 4,167 cubic feet, granted the district under the old permit of the war department.

This was the decision handed down by the United States supreme court Monday. It brought to a close one of the longest and most remarkable legal battles in American judicial history. . . .

Chicago has two chances to prevent the enforcement of the injunction at the end of the 60-day period. One is for the secretary of war to issue a temporary emergency permit authorizing the large diversion; and the other, a very slim one, for passage of emergency legislation by congress, legalizing the "steal."

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The low stage of water in the Great Lakes made it impossible for the pumping station to force water from the intake pipe for a couple of days last week, while a syphon arrangement was being installed. The trouble was finally overcome by the steamer Ste. Marie's boilers being fired and water pumped into the mains. Everything is jake again at the pumping station.

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A fleet of fast, powerful motorcycles driving by expert riders will patrol upper Michigan highways during the coming season as part of the state police department plan to rigidly enforce motor vehicles and traffic laws.

The upper peninsula detachment, under command of Captain Archie Downing with headquarters at Negaunee, now has eight machines and it is probable that three or four more will be added to the fleet before the opening of motor traffic in the spring. Road patrols of one to three men will operate from central points in several sections of the peninsula and practically all main trunk highways in the upper peninsula will be covered.

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The Newberry News tells this one:

Sometime in his gay and festive career, Ralph Hammermeister, a Rapinville farmer, read about "blind pigs" and being of an inventive turn of mind he decided he would have both a blind pig and a dead one. Thereupon he killed a porker and stowed away six gallons of "moon" inside of it and started for Newberry to supply the wants of his New Year customers. Unfortunately he met Officer Kuhn of the state police on the road, and as Hammermeister was an object of suspicion, he was stopped by Kuhn who proceeded to search his outfit. The pig was both blind and dead, but the officer was not; he discovered the "moon" and that is why the New Year proved anything but happy for Hammermeister, and a lot of Newberry fellows were shy of their New Year's cheer. A further search of Hammermeister's farm in Rapinville unearthed a very fine still. Hammermeister is being held for trial in the federal court.

A report comes from the northern end o the peninsula that deer face starvation there on account of the difficulty they have in securing their natural food. This section of the peninsula has experienced no such conditions, but it is reported that dogs are creating a havoc among the deer herd. Frank Ahlich of the conservation department reports that the territory around Kenneth is overrun with hounds and that five carcasses of deer killed by dogs were found within a short distance. He says at one place near Kenneth at the scene of lumber operations there are twenty shacks in which a hound is housed in each and that these hounds exist on nothing but the deer they can kill.

Senator James M. Wilcox, of the Ontonagon county district, in the Upper peninsula, . . . says that a large number of deer in the northern counties are suffering for want of food, and it is surmised some may be dying of starvation. The early winter with a snow fall of two feet has made it difficult for the animals to obtain food.

The deer, he explains, subsist through the winter largely on the boughs of threes felled in lumber damps. But cutting of timber in the camps does not, as a general rule, start until January.

Since enactment several years ago of a law permitting the shooting of bucks only, deer are becoming more plentiful each year, Senator Wilcox says.

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O. W. Hiser of Clark township was in the city Monday and was considerably worried over weather prospects which at that time had underwent a great change from the last of December. He said that the mild spell had spoiled the logging roads, and that spiders were drawling over the snow, the deer were running as in the fall and that bears had not holed up for the winter and that they were still being hunted with success in this section. He thought that every indication was for a mild winter.

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When one judges one's self the verdict is pretty sure to be acquittal.

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From Mackinac Island: S. N. Bradford, district telephone manager of the Soo, came over on the Elva yesterday and was expected to meet with the council last night in regard to placing the telephone lines underground.

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From Moran: Adam Soboleski, assistant operator, left for Soo Junction Saturday to take up a position there at a considerable higher salary than he received at Moran. Adam was a very good man in the depot and we are sorry to lose him.

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In a letter from Charles H. Hopkins, Les Cheneaux Islands, about Florida: Generally speaking the whole state is real estate crazy and the tourist who comes here and gets away without buying some part of Florida is the exception. One hears the discussions about real estate investments everywhere until it becomes sickening. Many make money big money, but more will have their real estate holdings for years to come and be unable to dispose of them. . . .

We pick up people everywhere that we know and some that we never have known who have lived in northern Michigan. In Cincinnati I met a young man named Smith who was just about to leave on a visit to his people near St. Ignace. In DeLand I met W. Nelson McAdam who was born on Mackinac Island and whose father was at tone time postmaster there. In St. Petersburg there are many; Mrs. R. S. Melchers of the Islington is hostess of the new Serene hotel, one of the finest new houses in the country George LaFleur has a fine property there. Mrs. Lulu Cross has another. Andrew Tanner and son Volney are at Pass-a-grill near by and there are others in various parts of the state. John M. Nichols, another Snows man has a fine place at Eustice.

50 YEARS AGO

The Republican-News

and St. Ignace Enterprise

January 7, 1960

Mackinac county supervisors in session this week accepted a special report on a proposed medical care facility submitted by Supr. Anne E. Crisler of Portage township.

Discussion of the report occupied the board which is considering the engagement of an architect to survey the proposed facility.

"We are budgeting approximately $73,000 per year for hospitalization," declared Supr. Harold E. Dettman of St. Ignace, chairman of the board. "While a medical care facility, on a dollars and cents basis, might not reduce this figure, it would provide better care for more people.

"At the present we have people housed in homes for the aged where medical care is not provided," he continued. "A facility in the county would bring these people into better conditions and looking at it from a human standpoint the provision of a facility would be a great forward step."

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Members of Unit 8 of the Northern Michigan Ottawa association are urged to attend a meeting at the K. of C. hall in St. Ignace from 7 to 9 p.m. on Saturday, Jan. 9.

According to Willard Lambert, president of the local association, discussion will include plans for disposition of the funds the association has raised. He said the membership includes residents of St. Ignace, Cedarville, Hessel, Curtis and Manistique.

All upper peninsula Indians are invited to participate in an enrollment Saturday, January 9 in St. Ignace.

Robert Dominic of Petoskey, president of the Northern Michigan Ottawa Association will be present at the Knights of Columbus Hall in St. Ignace to conduct the enrollment. Indians from as far as Escanaba are eligible for enrollment.

Dominic will bring the 1910 Durant Roll and persons attending the session will be able to examine the records of their ancestry.

The enrollment is open to both Ottawas and Chippewas, and members of the Bay Mills community have been invited to attend.

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Fire from an overheated stovepipe caught in the wall of a railway coach parked near Shore Lumber Yard on Monday at 6:16 p.m. Firemen answered the alarm at first feared it was the lumber yard, but found the coach, occupied by workmen with the railway maintenance gang, and subdued the blaze and smoke in a few minutes after breaking into the wall.

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Winter store hours in St. Ignace were announced today by the Retail committee of the Chamber of Commerce.

Most stores will comply with the committee's recommendation of being open from 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. daily.

The committee also considered Tuesday afternoon closing, but the various stores were not unanimously in favor of the action

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Ogle's store, founded here in 1883 by the late William Ogle, ended its grocery business on Jan. 1 this year.

The only three-story business building on State street in St. Ignace, will be offered for lease.

George Ogle, who started in the store to assist his mother in 1921, and Allen Ogle, his brother who came in the store in 1940, both have other business plans. John Ogle, also a brother, started in the store in 1937, but left it some years ago to establish himself in the curio business. He is the owner of Ogle's Deer Ranch on West US-2.

Allen Ogle will devote his time to his growing television repair and service business and will handle all of Taylor Appliance Center work.

George Ogle who already has established a curio business in a building adjacent to the Ogle store, will expand and occupy the former Kendall Surplus store building owned by Dr. Shaftoe.

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Police Chief Terry Fenlon this week called attention to motorists to the new city ordinance prohibiting parking on streets and alleys during the hours from 2 a.m. to 7 a.m.

"This ordinance will be strictly enforced," warned Fenlon. "The snow removal season is upon us and in order that the snow-fighting crews can keep streets in proper condition they must not be hampered by parked cars."

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A sharp increase in demand for upper peninsula land is predicted over the next 40 years. In point up the demand increase a specialist in community development urges U. P. citizens to consider more land use planning and need for zoning ordinances.

Abram Snyder, with the U. P. extension center of Michigan State university, calls attention to a U. S. Resources for the Future Report published in 1958 which predicts that demand for land such as in the U.P. will be 40 times as great as it was in 1955. Upper peninsula land is called resource-based recreation land. "In general this means we have scenery, water, climate, forests and other natural vacation attractions," Snyder says.

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From Mackinac Island: Boat service was not in operation Monday, December 28. The high wind continued and all trips were canceled. During the week we had fields of ice, but they did not hamper the boat service. Mail service was taken over by plane on Friday, January 1 At this time the plane is landing at the airport. Boat service will be discontinued on Saturday.

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From Les Cheneaux: Ice cutting operations have begun in Les Cheneaux as the Nye crew started cutting the ice in the Cedarville bay early this week. With about 12 inches of ice, the operations of putting up ice should take a little longer than it did last year. The temperatures last year at this time were much different from right now. The ice last year was about 22 inches in depth and the mercury was around the zero mark. The snow last year was measured in feet and this year it is measured in inches.

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During 1959, the Mackinac county draft board inducted 16 registrants as Michigan Selective Service draft boards continued to insure the strength of the nation's armed forces during 1959.

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Someone had a free Christmas party at the expense of John Torsky when they broke into his home in Cedarville sometime between Dec. 19 and 31.

The intruder helped himself to 24 bottles of Canadian beer and cooked a meal. The guest didn't seem to have any manners however; Torsky was left with a sink full of dirty dishes.

The incident was reported by state police.

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Moral Re-Armaments' "Beaver," a high powered former landing barge, was kept going 24 hours a day last week bucking ice in Moran bay as it carted carload after carload of supplies to and from the M. R.-A. Center at Mackinac Island. Easterly wind had packed crushed ice into the bay where rapidly lowering temperatures turned the slush into a barrier. At times it took the Beaver more than an hour to make dock from the water line outside the bay. On one trip the ship carried a heavy truck hear the stern and when the bow of the ship raised up on the ice, the truck was driven forward to add weight to break down the ice. This seemed to work. The race against the ice was to transport 10 carloads of building supplies for the new TV studio structure.

30 YEARS AGO

The St. Ignace News

January 10, 1980

Harold L. Dettman, who was honored in St. Ignace as Citizen of the Year and recognized in the Upper Peninsula as Person of the Year for his effective leadership in governmental and developmental organizations, died Friday, January 4, at his home. He was 73.

Mr. Dettman was slated for reelection Tuesday at the Mackinac County Board of Commissioners meeting for his 23rd year as chairman of the board. He served 25 years on the board since his election in 1955. Before that election he served from 1936 as a justice of the peace for 12 years.

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The Mackinac County Board of Commissioners broker their Tuesday morning meeting into two parts and adjourned early to attend the funeral of their long term Chairman, Herald L. Dettman.

The board elected Vernon (Tim) Hossack of Cedarville as its new chairman. The three commissioners present Emmet Vallier, Harry Pechta, and Hossack comprised the three unanimous votes for Hossack.

Mrs. Alma Tamlyn was appointed to serve as commissioner to replace Dettman by a unanimous vote. Mrs. Tamlyn had lost by only 53 votes to Mr. Dettman in the election last year for District 5.

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Rumored walkout by members of the Marine Engineer's Union on the Chief Wawatam railroad car ferry did not come off last week, but negotiations are still continuing between the Detroit and Mackinac Railroad and union representatives over increased wages and fringe benefits, according to an official of the railroad.

Captain Roderick Graham of the Chief Wawatam said there are only two members of the union on the boat, but there are five Marine Engineer's Union jobs. Three of the jobs are being filled by non-union employees, he said, because of a shortage of union engineers in the area.

Two other unions represent employees on the railroad ferry, the Seafarers International Union and the Master, Mates, and Pilots Union.

The Chief Wawatam now is operating three days a week with two runs a day between St. Ignace and Mackinaw City.

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Lawrence A. Rubin, executive secretary of the Mackinac Bridge Authority, was appointed chairman of the Millage Information Committee by Hospital Board Chairman Peter Della-Moretta at the board meeting Thursday, January 3.

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From Naubinway-Engadine: Fishermen, when you've speared that pike, try Tiny's good recipe: Dissolve a beef bouillon cube in one cup of water. Then don't measure, says Tiny, just use a big lump of butter, plenty of paprika and a lot of parsley flakes. Put the fish in a casserole, pour this mixture over it and bake, uncovered, for 45 minutes. Don't use any salt.

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From Mackinac Island: The sights ad sounds of winter an Islander riding her bicycle through town (note that the bicycle was still in use, since as of Saturday there was no snow on the Island) was listening to the quiet and then noticed a tinkling. It was the bits of ice floating in the bay, being washed back and forth under the docks.