Whenever I go into the town of Brimely I pass by this old shack. I often wonder about its story, if walls could talk I am sure this little building could tell an interesting tale.
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Henry Ford was obsessed with building the Model-T as efficient and inexpensive as possible. To do that he used the process of Vertical Integration where Ford Motor Company created companies that supplied the factory with materials. Ford made their own steel, harvested rubber and built sawmills to supply lumber to the factory.
A few miles south of L’Anse on U.S. 41 is the town of Alberta where Henry Ford built a sawmill town in 1936 to supply lumber to his grown auto company. The town was named after the daughter of one of his executives. The community consisted of a sawmill, houses for the workers and their families, and two schools to educate the children while their parents were working.
Henry Ford saw all the sawdust that was created by his sawmills and felt it was going to waste. At his sawmill in Kingsford Michigan, named for Edward G. Kingsford who worked for Ford managing his lumbering operations, the mill created an enormous amount of sawdust. A University of Oregon chemist, Orin Stafford invented a method for making pillow-shaped lumps of fuel from sawdust and called them charcoal briquettes. Thomas Edison designed the briquette factory built next to the sawmill and Edward G. Kingsford managed it. Ford sold the briquettes at his dealerships and after world war II as the suburbs grew and the Webber grill became popular, the demand for the bags of black briquettes soared. Ford sold the company in 1951 and it was renamed Kingsford in honor of Edward G. Kingsford.
In 1954 the town of Alberta was donated to Michigan Tech and is still used today for forestry education. If you’re in the area they give tours of the historic town and sawmill to visitors.
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Michigan winters can be so cruel, if it’s not the brutal cold and gusting winds it’s the heavy snow. The old Granary in Brimley which has been standing over a hundred years since it was built in 1913 could not take the weight of the snow and half of it collapsed on January 23rd, 2017. I am not sure what the fate of the old building will be. I took this photo a few years ago, sadly many places I have photographed are gone now, I guess that’s what happens when you take pics of old buildings and houses.
Besides the granary, the snow collapsed the roof on the old fire hall in Brimley next to the old wooden water tower, you can see my post with a pic of the tower HERE
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Poverty Island Lighthouse, U.S. Coast Guard Archives
Poverty Island is located in northern lake Michigan and one of several islands marking the entrance to Big Bay De Noc and Green Bay, as in the bay in lake Michigan, not the city. As shipping traffic increased on the Great Lakes it was decided that a light was needed to guide ships safely thru the chain of islands at the entrance to Green Bay. The U.S. Lighthouse Board commissioned a Lighthouse to be built on Poverty island in 1874 using the same design as the Lighthouse on Sturgeon Point near Harrisville on Lake Huron, ( you can read my post HERE) The Light was automated in 1958 and by 1965 the Lantern room at the top of the tower and the lens had been removed and replaced with an exposed electric light. The Light was permanently deactivated and abandoned in 1995 and the old discarded lantern room laying on the ground was retrieved and used to restore the Sand Point Lighthouse ( you can see my post HERE)
The Old abandoned Lighthouse, that’s on my ” Bucket List” of places to photograph, looks over the waters where treasure chests full of gold were tossed overboard into Lake Michigan. There are several theories of where the chests came from, one of them being, Jesse Strang the ” King of Beaver Island” and the leader of a Mormon colony on Beaver Island with the gold was collected from his followers. The plausible theory is that during the Civil War, a shipment of gold from Napoleon Bonaparte was being transported thru the great lakes down the Mississippi to fund the Confederate army. When a Union ship began attacking, the captain had the crew throw the treasure chests overboard in the waters off poverty island, so the gold could not be used by the Union Army, with the intention of retrieving it later.
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I wish this was a story of a wonderful Christmas miracle, but instead, it’s about a celebration that ended in tragedy. The town of Calumet, in the Keweenaw Peninsula, was one of the wealthiest towns in the United States in the late 1800’s because of its copper deposits and mining industry.
The Italian Hall in Calument, on the left side of the building you can see the arched doorway that remains as a memorial to those who died.
On Christmas Eve in 1913, after being on strike for 5 months copper miners and their families gathered for a yuletide party on the second floor of the Italian Hall in Calumet. During the party for the striking miners and their families, someone yelled, “Fire!” Although there was no fire, seventy-three people died while attempting to escape down a stairwell. Over half of those who died were children between the ages of six and ten. The belief is the door at the bottom of the stairway opened inward, and other sources say it opened outward toward the streets, but the narrow stairway became congested and after the first person fell it became a ” Domino Effect” with people trying to escape what they thought was a fire. The tragic event was part of the reason building codes were enacted for building capacity and fire escapes. The perpetrator who yelled “FIRE” creating the tragedy was never identified. It is believed to by some historians that “fire” was called out by an anti-union ally of mine management to disrupt the party. The event was memorialized by Woody Guthrie in the song “1913 Massacre”, which claims the doors were held shut on the outside by “the copper boss’ thug men”
The Italian Hall was built in 1908 as headquarters for Calumet’s benevolent society. The Society, organized along ethnic lines, encouraged and financially aided immigrants and provided relief to victims of hardship. Following the 1913 Christmas Eve tragedy, the hall continued to be used for nearly five decades. The two-story red brick building was razed in 1984. Through the efforts of the Friends of the Italian Hall and Local 324 of the AFL-CIO, the site of the building became a memorial park dedicated to the people who lost their lives in 1913.
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The stairway to Iargo Springs on the AuSable River
It seems like some of the most beautiful places in Michigan involve climbing stairs, and for someone like me that is allergic to stairs, it can make getting to these places a little challenging. I know it’s going to be an arduous trip when there is a warning sign at the top or bottom of the stairs telling you how many steps there will be. Even though it can be a lot of work transcending the stairway, I find in the end it’s always worth it, not only to see the magnificent beauty at the other end of the stairs, but to be able to say you did it. Some of my favorite places in no particular order are: Iargo Springs, Tahquamenon Falls, Sable Falls, Arch Rock on Mackinac Island or the spiral staircase of any lighthouse.
The stairway to Sable falls in the Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore
The stairway at Point Iroquois Lighthouse
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On a recent trip to Whitefish Point, I wanted to go out to the old Vermilion Point life-saving station that sits along the shores of Lake Superior between Crisp Point lighthouse and Whitefish Point Lighthouse. There is a road a few miles north of Paradise that takes you out to Vermilion. Well, actually it’s more of a sandy logging path than a road. After heading down the trail about 15 minutes I finally came to a sign that said Vermilion Point Nature Preserve, and I knew I was getting close. I went down the road a little more, and then all of a sudden, the road was completely under water. I think they had gotten a lot of rain, and the marsh next to the road overflowed, covering the road with water for a far as I could see. I guess I am not getting any pics of the life-saving station on this trip. I will just have to go back again, but now I know I need to go in the summer when it’s dry. I am disappointed when I can’t visit the places I want too, but without going out and exploring, you will never learn what you don’t know.
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“Just go with the flow, like a twig on a mighty river” Del Griffith
I got some pics at Tahquonomon Falls state park, and since I mostly see photos of the upper falls, I figure I would post a pic from the lower falls. I like visiting both when I get the chance to see the falls, but it seems like the upper falls are more popular, maybe because they are taller, or maybe because there is beer there. ( that seems to boos the popularity of just about anything) I do like the lower falls and I still need to rent a boat or kayak to get out to the falls way in the back, I guess on another trip when it’s warmer, and I have more time.
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I have a goal of visiting every lighthouse in Michigan, and I have seen most of the lighthouses that are easy to access, but now I need to start working on those, not so easy to see, lights on the Great Lakes. Crisp Point lighthouse is the “other light” on Whitefish Point. The Whitefish Point lighthouse north of Paradise is pretty easy to get to, but the Crisp Point lighthouse is about 20 miles of dirt road thru the Upper Peninsula forest. West of Tahquamenon State Park on M123 you head north on County Road 500 which ain’t to bad of road, but then you get to County Road 412 which is a seasonal road and that road is a winding twisty road thru the woods. When I was there ( in October of 2016) the road had standing water about every couple hundred yards, and you need to drive about 7 miles to the lighthouse down this road. Thankfully I drive a jeep, and it was not much of a problem for me, but I could see it being a problem for the average passenger car. 
So I am heading down the road, fording the water holes, getting deeper and deeper into the wilderness and there ain’t no cell service, voice, text or internet on my phone out there in middle of whitefish point. Then I get to a point in the road where there is a sign on the side of the road marking the location where two sisters were stranded for 13 days in there SUV in April of 2015. I am hoping I don’t have any breakdowns or anything. There are signs about every mile saying there is an emergency telephone at the lighthouse, which must have been added after the sisters got stranded.
After about 20 minutes of driving the seasonal road, I rounded a curve and there was Lake Superior and the top of the lighthouse peeking out over the trees. I get to the lighthouse and a couple people come out to greet me saying “ we were wondering if we were gonna get any visitors today” it was a husband and wife from Minnesota that were volunteer light keepers for a few days, and they were camping at the lighthouse welcoming visitors.
After taking some photos and visiting with the Lighthouse Keepers, which you can follow their blog HERE, I made the trek back to civilization. I took me an hour to get from the lighthouse to Tahquamenon Falls, but it was well worth the trip. If you have the time to do it, I would highly recommend it, just make sure you have a reliable car, or better yet, a truck or SUV, and you have plenty of gas, I burned about a ¼ tank getting there and back, and I would say to make sure you have some water and food just in case.
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I took this pic yesterday (10/20/16) on M123 at the entrance to the Upper Tahquamenon Falls during my road trip thru Michigan. This weekend would be the perfect weekend to head up to see the spectacular fall foliage. It’s like driving thru a Bob Ross painting. The colors north of Gaylord and Alpena are sure to peak this weekend. I did not make it over to the west side of the state near Petoskey so I can’t say for sure what the color is like over there but I am thinking they must be vibrant as well.
I also went along the Au Sable River from M65 to Oscoda, and I would say its just a little before peak color, I think it will peak in a few more days, but it is still really breathtaking looking out over the river at Lumberman’s Monument.
I hope you can get out and enjoy this once a year magical time in Michigan before it’s gone. I have lots of pics and stories to share over the next few weeks. I hope you will sign up for email updates so you won’t miss anything.
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