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Web Hosting & Design by: Contact
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| History
of the Little Manistee Watershed » Lumbering Starts « |
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In the fall of 1840, John Stronach of Berrien County Michigan, accompanied by his brother Joseph Stronach, arrived by sailboat at the Lake Michigan mouth of the Manistee River. They were met by a party of Chippewas who they hired to help them explore the Manistee and it's watershed. They followed the Manistee until they were blocked by an ancient jamb of logs, flood wood and fallen trees; and finding no good place for a dam they returned to Manistee Lake and explored the little river called by the indians "Mamoosa" or "Dog River". They located a point for a saw mill site, and then returned to Muskeegon for the winter. The following spring, Stronach and his son Adam returned by way of a chartered schooner, "The Thornton", with saw mill equipment and supplies. At the mouth of the Manistee they transfered the saw mill equipment to a raft and towed the raft with a cutter to the Little Manistee site. April 16, 1841 marks the start of the permanent settlement of the watershed. A camp was built, a road cut, a dam constructed, and by the close of 1841 the first saw mill that ever startled the silence of the unbroken forest was ready for operation. After this, other lumbering entrepeneurs began to establish steam driven saw mills on Manistee Lake and thus began the clear cutting of the great white pine and hardwood forests. Some of the more prominant mill owners besides the Stronachs were; John Canfield, Louis Sands, R.G. Peters, Delos L. Filer, Edward Wheeler, M. Engleman, Horace Tabor, James Dempsey, Evan Davies, Chas Reitz, S. Babcock, Blacker, Ruddock and others. Besides being mill owners, all these individuals held extensive forested properties throughout the watersheds on which they clear cut the timber to supply their mills. The headwaters of the Little Manistee in Lake County did not see extensive lumbering development occur until the Civil War. A saw mill was set up in 1880 where the Little River crossed the "Old State Road", which extended from Grand Rapids to Traverse City. The mill was the result of a partnership between brothers David and Robert Wilson, and their brother-in-law William Luther, from whom the Village of Luther got it's name. When the Grand Rapids and Indians Railroad was completed in 1882 with a spur to the village, the population of Luther zoomed. In 1883 the population reached 1000 and even grew more at the peak of the lumbering boom. |
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| Taken from "History of Manistee County", published in 1882 and "Michigan Ghost Towns", by R.L. Dodge |