Michigan Iron

Sunday, September 27, 2015

We left Hancock this morning.  As always, it’s an enjoyable visit to Copper Country and this was no exception.  The history is fascinating and the country is beautiful. 

On the way to Marquette, we stopped at the Ford Center.  It was right off US41 at the town site of Alberta.  You probably will not find Alberta on a map (current population of 18) because it was a planned community established by Henry Ford to support one of his many sawmill operations in the UP.  This one is now in the hands of Michigan Technical University for forestry studies.

Ford used a lot of hard wood in the building of his cars.  It was used in the coach work, in some of the frame components, and even in shipping boxes for parts, etc.  His suppliers of the wood kept raising prices, so he decided to acquire his own wooded tracts so he didn’t have to deal with them.  The UP had lots of hardwood. 

So Ford bought 1700 acres here, about 8 miles south of L’Anse, and built a sawmill.  The surrounding land supplied enough trees to support his sawmill.  He employed 22 people to run the mill.  Since it was in the middle of nowhere back then, he built housing for them and their families.  He named the town Alberta, after the daughter of one of his executives, Edward Kingsford.  Remember that name!

Ford introduced a new line of luxury cars with wood sides, “woodies” as we know them today.  The wood work on them was true craftsmanship.  It took about 250 board feet of hardwood for these cars.  The little sawmill in Alberta knocked out 14,000 board feet per day, but that was not enough.  Ford actually operated several mills in this area, we saw another in Pequaming many years back.

Every bit of the log was used.  Bark and waste hunks were given to the towns people for firewood.  The sawdust was used to fire the steam boilers.  The ash was used for making charcoal briquettes.  Yep, Ford was the inventor of BBQ charcoal.  To sell the concept, when you bought a Ford, he gave you a grill and a bag of charcoal; originally only available at Ford dealers.  He then turned the operation over to his exec, Edward Kingsford.  So what do you think they named it?  Kingsford Charcoal.

 

Alberta also represented Ford’s concept of a company community.  He built schools, churches, community centers, etc.  He felt if the employees were content and there was a good family life, they would be better workers.  Woodies were a trend that died off after WWII, so the mill got shut down in 1954.  Ford donated the land to MTU and in 2009 provided the funds to restore the mill.

 

Monday, September 28, 2015

We are in Marquette at their city campground.  Pretty nice, although pretty lonely.  Fewer then 10 campers here.

Its rainy this morning so a couple of indoor activities are on the to-do list.  First stop was the Maritime Museum.  A few things to share that we found interesting.  You have heard us mention the Fresnel lens used in lighthouses.  They aren’t just pretty, there is a lot of engineering and craftsmanship to them.  Take a look at the next two pictures.  The one on the left is a red bulb inside a 4th order Fresnel.  The lantern is cut away to expose the bulb.  Look at the light pattern.  The one on the right is the same bulb projected through the Fresnel.  Note the light pattern.  The lens has focused it into a fine vertical plane of light, and dramatically increased its intensity.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now you see why these were so important to the function of the lighthouses.

The was quite a bit about shipwrecks on Lake Superior.  Have a look at this map, the black dots are shipwrecks that have occurred here since commercial shipping got started in the mid-1800s.

You can’t even begin to count all the dots.  Notice the high concentration along the Minnesota coast and around the ports of Duluth and Superior, WI.  With the rocky coast and many submerged islands and reefs, there is no forgiveness like there is with sand or mud.

Unfortunately, the Marquette Lighthouse was undergoing maintenance and no tours until 2016 season.  It is an active Coast Guard Light on Coast Guard property.  This picture was the only angle we had.  We’ll put in another one if we get a better shot tomorrow.

Finally, we stopped at the Iron Heritage Museum in Negaunee, about 10 miles west of Marquette.  This is the site where the first, big, iron strike occurred in 1844.  The first mine was the Jackson Mine Company, which operated from 1860 to 1925, by some guys from Jackson County in southern Michigan.   In that time 4.4 million tons (think about that number for a minute; that is 8,800,000,000 pounds) were removed.  That is from one mine.  In its heyday, there were over 800 mines that produced over a billion tons of iron ore around here.  A couple of interesting tidbits of info.  Often, ore veins were located by using the needle deviation of a magnetic compass and the iron ore in Michigan produced a wealth 50 times greater than the gold rush in California.

Today, only two large open pit mines remain operational, Tilden and Empire.  The use of plastics and competition from foreign iron and steel has reduced the demand and the economics of the Michigan iron.

There is a lot more to learn in Negaunee so we are going back tomorrow.