Uncategorized Archives - Page 13 of 17

K9 Veterans Day – March 13th

Posted on March 13, 2014 by Mike Sonnenberg Posted in Uncategorized .

The United States K9 Corps was started on March 13^th 1942, and there is an effort to make this national K9 Veterans Day. And although it is not recognized nationally Michigan and a few other states has declared March 13^th K9 Veterans Day to honor all dogs that have served in the military, police and civilian search and rescue.

Michigan War Dog Memorial in South Lyon

The Michigan War Dog Memorial and Cemetery is in South Lyon, on Milford and 11 Mile Road. It is a beautiful memorial and final resting place for the dogs of Michigan that have served our country and state so faithfully.

Michigan War Dog Memorial Cemetery

Thank You to all the handlers trainers and dogs that have served so loyally

Michigan War Dog Memorial website

K9 Veterans Day Website

Coal Mine No 8 – Michigan Historical Marker

Posted on March 11, 2014 by Mike Sonnenberg Posted in Michigan Historical Markers, Uncategorized .

Located at the Hartley Outdoor Education Center coal mine No8 was one of the longest operating coal mines in Michigan.

the marker reads

Coal Mine No 8 located at Hartley Education Center

Coal was discovered in the St. Charles area in 1896. On this site in 1917 the Robert Gage Coal Company sunk a shaft 200 feet beneath the surface. The main entry off the shaft was about three miles long. At times, the mine employed as many as four hundred men, who worked in pairs. In 1919 a miner earned sixty to seventy cents per ton. After undercutting and blasting coal from seams 22 to 64 inches thick, miners shoveled it into cars that were pulled by mules and electric motors to the cage, where it was lifted up the shaft to the tipple. It was then sorted, weighed and loaded into railroad cars. The highest grade of bituminous coal in Michigan was mined here until 1931, when the shift to other fuels and competition from higher grade coal in other states made it necessary to close.

Photo of workers at Mine No 8, photo courtesy of Harley Outdoor Education Center

To view the mine contact Hartley Outdoor Education Center, because Hartley is and education center they usually have students visiting and you need to check in with them at the office before you can have access to property. Contact info can be found HERE

Remnants of the tipper used to tip coal out of the coal cars coming out of the mine

remnants of the processing plant used to clean and sort the coal

Alabaster – Michigan Historical Marker

Posted on February 26, 2014 by Mike Sonnenberg Posted in Michigan Historical Markers, Uncategorized .

The sign in Alabaster reads

This area is named after a variety of gypsum, discovered offshore by Douglass Houghton in 1837. Prospectors soon began searching for other gypsum deposits, and this quarry was opened in 1862 by B.F. Smith. Used at first as fertilizer and as an ingredient in plaster, gypsum is now used principally in the manufacture of wallboard. A fire in 1891 destroyed the operation but it was rebuilt in time to supply material for the main buildings at the Chicago Columbian Exposition of 1893. These buildings, with marble-like walls, earned the exposition the title “White City,” and greatly expanded gypsum sales. Incorporated into the U.S. Gypsum Co. in 1902, this quarry has helped make Michigan a leading producer of gypsum for over a century.

alabaster loading dock

Calendar Giveaway

Posted on February 23, 2014 by Mike Sonnenberg Posted in Uncategorized .

I have a new contest plugin for my website but I need to test it out, I know it’s a little late in the year to be sending out calendars but I figured it would be something to try out my new contest plugin for future giveaways.

[contesthopper contest=”536″]

Watrous General Store – Michigan Historical Marker

Posted on February 18, 2014 by Mike Sonnenberg Posted in Michigan Historical Markers, Uncategorized .

Aaron Watrous and his crew of loggers came here in 1852 to cut the virgin pine of the Cass River Valley. In 1860 he platted the town naming it Watrousville, and a few years later constructed this building as a general store. The flagpole in front is thought to have been erected during the 1864 presidential campaign. Watrous died in 1868, and in 1882 the building became the Juniata Township Hall. Since 1972 it has been a museum of the Watrousville-Caro Area Historical Society.

Watrouse General Store in Watrouseville Mi.

Why I Photograph the Places I do

Posted on February 17, 2014 by Mike Sonnenberg Posted in Uncategorized .

Old General Store in Kilmanagh

When people think of photos of Michigan they think of the Mackinaw Bridge, the Sleeping Bear Dunes or Sunsets on Lake Michigan. They are all wonderful things we all love in Michigan, but there is so much more. My goal of this website is to post current photos daily. Since I live in Saginaw, in the center of the L.P. there is not a lot of waterfalls and natural wonders to photograph, so instead I like to get pics of the historical places and other interesting things I find.

The long winter months can be challenging because the downtown areas have snow along the sides the roads from the plows, it does not look that appealing in photographs. I go out to the countryside and the skies are usually gray and dull. Winter time isa good time for me to show some of the old and forgotten places I find around the state. I do show a lot of old farm houses, not because I want to glorify the heartbreak and sadness of these old forgotten homes but to show they are still here and remind us of long ago times and of hard work and struggle. I see so many photos of inner city abandonment and the struggles that the large cities in Michigan have been dealing with for the past few decades. I feel that the small towns and rural areas are overlooked and are struggling in this economy too. When I go to small towns and I see empty shops and buildings with for sale or for rent signs, It’s sad to see and I know they are struggling to survive just like the people in the big cities. I do my best to also show some of the places a town is proud of too, like a park or restored home or historic building, but during the winter it can be challenging to get some nice photos of those places.

I don’t consider my page something to promote Michigan to tourists like Pure Michigan. I like to post photos that I find interesting. It may not be all rainbows and unicorns but I do like posting the pics I take and I hope you enjoy looking at them too. I hope I show you places you may have forgotten about or never seen before and there is beauty all around us besides sunsets and waterfalls.

Old House on Silver Lake Road.

The Forgotten Stone Home

Posted on February 11, 2014 by Mike Sonnenberg Posted in Uncategorized .

Ammi Wright House Circa 1900, photo from them Library of Congress archive

I came across this house last summer on one of my whirlwind road trips taking photos in central Michigan. There are few houses in Michigan that are as intriguing as the Ammi Wright house in Alma.. At that time I did not know anything about this house until I posted a photo of it. I was told it was the Ammi Wright house which is remarkable to me, since Ammi Wright got his start in my hometown of Saginaw with the lumber industry. He eventually moved to Alma and built this magnificent house in 1888

Ammi Wright house in Alma summer of 2013

the Wright family sold the house to become Smith Memorial Hospital in 1934 and then Northwood Institute in 1959. In my research on the house I found out it is now owned by Kurt Wassenaar, an architect from Alma and he plans on restoring the house and making it into a hotel. you can read more about it HERE

Ammi Wright house in Alma in winter 2014

Ammi Wright donated the land and money to start Alma College and it is good to see someone is taking an interest in saving this house. We live in an era where the cost to build new is cheaper that restoration, but no one seems to factor in “historical value” when making that statement. I thank people like Mr Wassenaar for caring about our history and architecture to invest in it. I am sure it will be a long and challenging process but I hope I get to tour it when it’s completed.

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Ammi Wright house in Alma circa 1900 Photo: Library of Congress Archive

Remember Rainbo Bread?

Posted on January 23, 2014 by Mike Sonnenberg Posted in Uncategorized .

One of the inspirations for doing what I do is Mike and Frank from American Pickers, driving around in there van looking for “rusty gold”. I am not looking stuff to buy, but I am always looking for interesting things along the way that I can photograph. I always try to take back roads when I can, and traveling from Chesaning to Oakley, I saw this old semi trailer. I could make out a logo, but not to well, but it defiantly caught my eye since I especially like old advertising signs and murals. When I got home and looked closer at the photograph, I realized it was a Rainbo Bread trailer. It looks like it has been converted to something else since it has a smoke stack out the side, but the original logo was still visible.

It was fascinating to find it, since my dad used to work at the bread factory in Saginaw a long time ago. I remember going on a tour there when I was younger, and getting some freshly baked bread at the end of the tour. I tried to find the history of Rainbo Bread online but I could not find anything, the internet seems as empty as the building that was once home the bakery on Holland and Remington in Saginaw’s East Side.

I remember we always had Rainbo bread as a kid, and a lot of the stuff we bought was made locally and you knew where and how it was made. Now I go to the store and who knows where the stuff comes from, China I mostly. Maybe that is why I like the old advertising signs, and Frank and Mike buy a lot of them for their store.

There were lager corporations when I was a kid, but they had local factories since it was a little more difficult to ship, now anything can be shipped anywhere, and made who knows where. I guess that is why I prefer to go to locally owned and operated business.

What Happened to the Fenton Monastery

Posted on January 19, 2014 by Mike Sonnenberg Posted in Uncategorized .

Besides roaming the back roads of Michigan, I wonder around the internet on google and I find some interesting stuff to take photos of. I found an article about an old monastery in Fenton, so you know I had to check it out while I was in the area. I was driving down the street towards it, then I seen this enormous building, but half of it was ripped open when the outer wall collapsed. I was planning on getting a photo of this gorgeous old building and I ended up feeling like batman walking in on Harvey Dent with half of his facing melting in the acid he was lying in. The monastery is such an enormous building, the main floor is one story off the ground then the two main floors are way taller than average just by looking at the door opening you can see how tall the ceilings are. It has an attic that was tall enough to be used as floor space too, by my estimate it’s a 5 story tall stone building. It’s difficult to think that something so massive is so venerable to time and decay. “Ruin Porn” is the hip thing with photographers these days, maybe because where they live they have not seen the devastating effects of the economy like we have in Michigan. I was hoping to post a photo of a beautiful building and instead I feel like I am posting a corpse that was a victim of circumstances.

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Old School Snow Days

Posted on January 6, 2014 by Mike Sonnenberg Posted in Uncategorized .

When they call off school my kids get a phone call, email and text, or you can go on several different web sites to find out instantly if school has been canceled. When I was a kid, I had to sit by the radio and listen for my schools name to be announced in a long list of schools. I went to Carrollton Public Schools and it was a small district without any bussing so we were about the last school to close, and I would have to listen to the radio DJ read thru a list of a hundred schools waiting to hear if it was added to the end. There were no computers back then, so the list was not alphabetized, it was in whatever random order the schools submitted there closings. I remember on snow days waking up early just to listen to the radio and to see if school was closed and by the time I heard those glorious words “Carrollton Public Schools are closed” I was awake for an hour or two and now way to exited to go back to sleep. My brothers and I were out early playing in the freshly fallen snow. I think the best snow days were the ones that were never anticipated and mom would let us sleep in and then tell us school was canceled. It’s strange that we have so much information and instant access about what the weather is doing. I remember the days of Chuck Waters forecasting the weather with a map on a wall and some magnetic snowflakes and clouds. I hope wherever you are you are enjoying your “snow day”

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