It is said that he had his own private rail car that would drop him and his guests friends, family and colleagues at the town and the lodge of their choice. The Huron Mountain Club is a private club whose land holdings in Marquette County, in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, constitute one of the largest tracts of primeval forest in the Great Lakes region. Among the early residents to be licensed was none other than Henry Ford, who was 56 at the time. 609 N Mountain View Pl, Fullerton, CA 92831 is for sale. left two widely-separated segments of the highway remaining. "You had to travel almost to Big Bay, and there was a little cabin with a phone on a table. Its a clear example of Fords relentless obsession with power in all senses of the word, willingness to throw around his weight, and (ultimately) short attention span. Perhaps, say, the Vagabonds expeditions were actually an important part of a publicity campaign to promote more government road construction? You can view flood and environmental risk in nearby areas on the map. membership. In the late teens, the area of the Huron Mountains was still only served by logging roads and unimproved two-tracks. Last September, I was invited to go mushroom hunting with a group of mycologists, visual artists, a poet, and a literary scholar at the Ives Lake Field Station, a restricted-access research station on Michigans Upper Peninsula located within the Huron Mountain Club. Founded in the 1890s by wealthy white Midwest outdoor enthusiasts qua enviro-capitalists, the HMC sits on more than 8,000 hectares of old-growth hardwood forest. (There is a reason why early bicycles were known as boneshakers.) along the proposed route of M-35. Formed circa 1890, the club consists of 50 dwellings clustered inside about 20,000 acres (31sqmi; 8,100ha) of private land, encompassing the Huron Mountains area. Within its boundaries lie towering virgin pines, blue ribbon trout streams, and pristine lakes. The value of this collaborative endeavor increases as higher education becomes more privatized and politically vulnerablesomething not lightly felt in the state of Wisconsin, where I work. Day 4. A state trunkline log dated January 1948, however, Burbank was famous for finding new, practical uses for plant chemicals. From the top of Bald Mountain the morning light gave our surroundings a very much different aspect when we awoke to a perfectly crisp autumn daybreak. Our frontage and forest acreage lie two miles inside the guarded gates and 22,000 protected acres of the legendary Huron Mountain Club that surrounds us, 26 miles north of Marquette. What may just save this piece of land, for now, is its private status. His efforts against the road project must have impressed the club, as they eventually made him a full member. While this 19-mile long Formed circa 1890, the club consists of 50 dwellings clustered inside about 13,000 acres of private land, encompassing the Huron Mountains area. Formed circa 1890, the club consists of 50 dwellings clustered inside about 20,000 acres (31 sq mi; 8,100 ha) of private land, encompassing the Huron Mountains area. Burroughs found Ford and Edison to be intelligent and entertaining companions. But those conversations quickly stalled, so finding an answer to Lindaus question took some time. The club's interests have shifted over the years, toward conservation of its pristine wilderness. Though locals grumble about the lack of access to the property, the Huron Mountain Club has proved to be an exceptional steward of the land. he was able to become a member of the HMC as soon as possible. Rockland. 91.3 Port Huron 89.7 Lansing 91.1 Flint. The place is considerably pared down from its excessive glory years of the roaring 20's. Henry Fords iconic tire tracks lead to dozens of historic sites around the U.P., including a 30-plus mile scenic two-track between Big Bay and LAnse. (The Spring 1938 official highway map and the And, they have supported it seriously as a result. These rarified acres on the shore of Lake Superior may be left undeveloped if approved for a tax break by the state. Hebard moved to land on the Pine River, in the Clubs holdings and Henry and Clara Ford began using the bungalow as a vacation home. Second, in 1926, Dan Hebard, who had personally benefited from Fords wealth, was elected the new president of the Huron Mountain Club and one of his first acts as executive was to change the rules for membership. Visitors today can spend the night at the Thunder Bay Inn, where Ford once stayed for several months while in town on business. He helped shape the states early tourism industry in more ways than one. In 1929, he was a member. One expedition even included a player piano. From Herders to Hikers, the Shifting Lives of Scottish Bothies, What Dogs Can Teach Us About Justice: A Conversation with Colin Dayan, 2020 Visions: Imagining (Post-) COVID Worlds, Plantationocene Series: Plantation Worlds, Past and Present, invasive species, climate change, and other factors, Center for Culture, History, and Environment (CHE), Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies, When Aboriginal Burning Practices Meet Colonial Legacies in Australia, Reflections on the Plantationocene: A Conversation with Donna Haraway and Anna Tsing, In Hawaii, Plantation Tourism Tastes Like Pineapple, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. The cabin still apparently exists, but because of the very private nature of the Huron Mountain Club you cant visit it like you can the Ford Bungalow in Pequaming (available for rental by groups up to 16, should you want to sleep where Henry and Clara slept). This new trunkline would M-35 from Negaunee to Baraga was removed. Photo by Andrew Thomas, September, 2017. at the time. for minor backroads and two-tracks in remote country. The Steel Bridge survived a catastrophic flood in May 2003 when a dam upstream burst. But Lindau thought there might be some other ways to get in. Today the 25,000-acre enclave is owned mostly by the descendants of those original members. Henry Ford loved exploring the outdoors and was always seeking adventure. One of the NHAs first projects was publishing a map of its proposed system of National Highways, a 50,000 mile network of roads that Davis characterized as a broad and comprehensive system of National Highways, built, owned, and maintained by the National Government. The association cited defense and military purposes to promote its system of national highways, presaging one of the Eisenhower administrations rationales for starting the Interstate Highway system in the 1950s. in getting the state highway skirting the southern eged of the Huron Mountain Club cancelled, Henry Ford of Neguanee. of land in northern Marquette County on the shores of Lake Superior northwest On this McCormick chose the site for a cluster of log and stone cabins,a grand camp, unparalleled anywhere in the world. On Thursday, August 23, 1923, the newspaper reported the Ford party had made its way to LAnse in Baraga County, where Ford owned a sawmill, dock facilities, 30,000 acres of timber and other facilities. You can hear more of our conversation with Archer Mayor here, and you can listen to more of Randy Annala's story about trying to get into the club here. Directly or indirectly, the Vagabonds shaped public opinion about many things, including the famous participants image as regular folks, the practicality of the automobile for long-distance travel, and the need for better roads. Buying land in Fullerton. Driving from Marquette to the Clubs main office (from Wright Street), Head north at the roundabout with a convenience store on the corner onto Sugarloaf Rd. But a man he met explained otherwise. Their families were so close that Bill Ford Jr., the chairman of Ford Motor Company, is the great grandson of both Henry Ford and Harvey Firestone. Farmers and rural politicians were clamoring for better roads to take crops to market, using the slogan Get the farmers out of the mud! Washington listened, and the Federal Aid Road Act of 1916 was passed, creating the Federal Aid Highway Program which in 1919 started to fund state highway agencies with matching funds for building roads. Want updates when Huron Mountain Club has new . Frederick Miller of Miller Brewing owned his piece of wilderness at Craig Lake, now a wilderness state park. All of this is a problem. It is navigable by a passenger car in ideal conditions, while Instead of backing the Lincoln Highway, Ford was a supporter of Charles Henry Davis National Highways Association, founded in 1911 with the slogan Good Roads Everywhere. The club's founder envisioned it as a money-making venture. Even in urban areas, what we today call pavement was then a relatively new thing. We know that an archipelago of private landholdings in the service of conservation will always have porous ecological borders, but human mobility across these borders shows how they can also be a selective and semi-permeable membrane that wealth and privilege (including academic privilege) alone can lubricate. Ford promptly started the car, turned the Model T around and easily backed up the hill in reverse gear., Eberly states he has told that story many times and himself assumed the key was reverse gear. "We had heard legends about these gigantic waterfalls and caves and deep spring-fed lakes and fish that were in those lakes that had been there since the beginning of time," he said. Over the course of his career, he acquired over 313,000 acres of timberland for logging, operated several mill sites and owned several towns. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); Your email address will not be published. What if I drank the lake like a tonic? We don't know exactly how this is split up among members, but as Mayor states above, the largest burden is on the 50 "regular members.". from the land in the manufacture of his automobiles in Detroit. The concept of bringing vacationers en masse to the club would prove to be ironicmore on that later. He succumbed to a year-long battle with glioblastoma, an aggressive brain cancer, in March 2018. Today, it's more than 20,000 acres -- thats equal to about eight Mackinac Islands. from US-41/M-28 (between To give you an idea of how much power and influence Henry Ford personally had, Michigans Public Service Commission granted Ford, a private individual, the right of eminent domain to seize land adjacent to dam sites in Michigan for his Village Industries project. Harvey and Tom werent exactly camping out of backpacks. the automotive industry and enabled the "common man" to afford his very own update to your home value. The region of the Hurons is generally regarded as the most rugged wilderness in Michigans Upper Peninsula, already one of the most rugged areas of the United States. a different river, but one in a completely different state! The Stonehouse on Ives Lake in Michigans Upper Peninsula. While we think of cars as being made of metal, its estimated that the manufacture of one Model T used about 250 board feet of lumber. Kingsford, developed charcoal briquettes from wood waste. Staff included chefs, waiters, and waitresses, while members brought their chauffeurs, maids, and butlers, to make roughing it as comfortable as possible. of determining shoreline routings for much of the Great Lakes coastline There are many opportunities up here at the club. Edison organized a camping trip to the Everglades that was originally going to be men only but Mrs. Edison, Mina, insisted on going. He had the Ford Railroad constructed between the towns of LAnse and the Cliff River to service his logging operations, including the 300,000 acres Ford bought in 1922. Club members continued with the tradition of dress-up dinner at the clubhouse until at least 1986, when Mayor was working on the book. Moon Michigan reveals the best of the Great Lakes States charming small towns, vibrant urban hubs, and vast, untouched wilderness. In 1919, the State Highway Department designated a new trunkline routegiven the M-35 route numberto run northwesterly from the Negaunee area through the Huron Mountains But, back to Lindaus question. Member cabins, along with a clubhouse and support buildings, are clustered at the mouth of the Pine River on Lake Superior. Early voyageurs to Michigan made their way around the state by birch bark canoe. As we bobbed through this glacial lake, the newly changing leaves danced like seasonal glitter before they landed on us. Many of the Interstate Highways follow pretty much the same routes as Davis. Ford needed to stack the deck in his favor to ensure the Huron Mountains, transporting logs to his mills at Alberta. He started it as a simple "shooting and fishing club," and had to work to drum up enough memberships to run the place. He proposed that the money would come from car and automotive accessory companies donating 1 percent of their revenue to pay for materials with communities along the route paying for construction equipment. From Mayor's book: There is no hard proof on what finally made him successful, but there are interesting circumstances. All four men, though, understood the value of publicity. continues northwesterly as a road called "Blind 35" on many maps. Insularity makes islands appear remote and parochial instead of interconnected. The club is expensive to run, and the dues match. The trope of island insularity is relevant here, but so is the shape of island insularity. I should add that at one point, there was also a Provisional Member category, and no Seniors." The club also contributes to the local economy -- tax returns list the number of employees at 79 as of 2015, and at least one former employee has gone on the record with fond memories of the place. Moreover, these lands provide carbon sequestration, recycling the air for humans in our shared (even though unequally shared) habitation of this planet. Annala says he and a childhood friend got a little bit obsessed. Rd. Fisher said it would cost $10 million to build. While its easy to think of the explosive growth of the automobile industry in the early 20th century as the natural expansion of an inevitable market, the historical truth is that early auto and truck sales were hampered by the lack of good roads, particularly between cities. We went into this story knowing this about the club, but still made a lot of attempts to get an exception -- to no avail. Transportation began to change dramatically in 1903, with the founding of the Ford Motor Company and its release of the first Model T in Detroit in 1908. Some feel the Act is meant for struggling farmers, while others feel it is intended for land protection no matter . "You had chauffeurs, you had maids, you had butlers, you had chambermaids, you had people tending to livestock, you had waiters and waitresses, you had chefs. The Clublands include unpaved roads to access a network of interior lakes and streams as well as trails to other points of interest. So, dinner was not something where gentlemen could even take off their jackets if it was stifling hot, and it was stiflingly hot because there was no air conditioning in the early days.". Edge Effects is a digital magazine about environmental issues produced by graduate students at the Center for Culture, History, and Environment (CHE), a research center within the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies at the University of WisconsinMadison. The club was started in 1889 by John Longyear (also the founder of a large forestry business) as a shooting and fishing club, and, basically, as a moneymaking operation. is two-lane gravel-surfaced. Pinhole camera photo by Adriana Barrios, September 2017. A mushroom breaks through the duff on the forest floor. Hebard changed the rules to put the decision in the hands of club directors and only one no was needed to block election. Sara Thomas is a Literary Studies Ph.D. student in the English Department at the University of WisconsinMadison and a member of the Edge Effects editorial board. The club was founded to establish a remote hunting and fishing club for outdoor enthusiasts. Featured image: Witches butter (Tremella mesenterica). In 1917, he purchased a 200-acre island located 3 miles off Bowers Harbor in West Grand Traverse Bay. Follow After the Gate directions below thereafter. Claim your home and get an email whenever there's an The transaction included a 14-room lakeside Southern style bungalow Hebard had built as a private lodge to please his wife, a southern belle, along with land adjacent to the nearby Huron Mountain Club. Several portions of these lakeshore Henry Ford was a bird watcher and a fan of Burroughs books. Insularity favors stasis, a myth itself because people, cultures, ideas, ecosystems are mobile, and transgressive, even if for varying and violent reasons. isolated area and bring another highway closer to a stretch of Great Lakes Aldo Leopold was enlisted to help the club with land and wildlife management, and in 1938, he published a "Report on Huron Mountain Club.". Finally, the Michigan Attorney General issued an opinion that said that if two-thirds of the property over which a road would pass was owned by people who opposed the road, that would be sufficient to overcome eminent domain and the road would be blocked. Ford and Firestone were already business associates, Firestone supplying Ford with tires and other rubber components, as well as good friends. All of those products were used either in house or sold commercially. work completed on the Baraga Co portion. Freelance writer Dianna Stampfler is president of Promote Michigan and resides in Petoskey. The members easily had enough clout to stop construction of a road that was to link LAnse with Big BayCounty Road 550 abruptly ends west of Big Bay at a gate and security guard house. You would travel out there many a mile through dirt road[s], and if you were a member of the club and you had to call your office or home or something like that, that's how you had to do it. if some rock cuts into the side of a hill were made for this highway as 13. Ford and Lincoln vehicles, as well as heavier trucks, were customized to carry the Vagabonds gear. Unlike the National Park system, which was founded at nearly the same time as the HMC and which conserved land for public enjoyment and appreciation, the HMC was always private, exclusive, and elite. Negaunee and Marquette to US-41 at Also, Henry was exceptionally wealthy and powerful and perhaps members thought he would make a caricature of their own wealth and power. was forced to wait until a club member either resigned or died. well. the first state trunklines were laid out in the second decade of the twentieth Wikimedia by rossograph - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, Avoidable Contact #121: In which a Radical is rescued, and raced, and crashed. When I will build a car for the great multitude, Henry Ford once said of the Model T. It will be so low in price that no man making a good salary will be unable to own one and enjoy with his family the blessing of hours of pleasure in Gods great open spaces.. Technicians are currently working on the problem. The growing popularity of the automobile helped fill out the constituency of those who wanted better roads. Ford loved Among the items available for viewing is Camping in Cloverland with Henry Ford, an out-of-print book published in 2012 by Guy Forstrom, which chronicles Fords recreational time in the U.P. Its over 1,000 square miles where the terrain rises to rugged hills and even mountains. Co Rd 510 southwest of Big Bay to the corner of Skanee & Portice Rds But as Mayor points out, the Club has come a long way from that vision, and is really a money-losing venture for the families who run it. 3: "Not Out of the Woods Yet". In the reporting process, we uncovered a lot of other information about the club. The Huron Mountain Club is a private club whose land holdings in Marquette County, in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, constitute one of the largest tracts of primeval forest in the Great Lakes region. Blind Employees would also set up individual ten-foot square canvas tents, with cots and mattresses and personalized with the Vagabonds names, and prepare the firewood for the campfires (that Henry Ford didnt himself chop). [2] The research facility at Ives Lake was started in the 1960s, after it passed from a member family's hands into Club ownership. There are hundreds of well-marked hiking trails and dirt roads that lead to beautiful picnic or swimming spots. (M-35 had been routed out of downtown Neguanee a few years Environmental risk data is provided by Risk Factor, In fact, most roads ran well inland of the 'big lakes.' Proceed about 5 miles (on County Road KK) to the end of the paved road and the Huron Mountain Club gate. as state trunklines! So, it was more like an Earl Grey lake. just south of L'Anse, was Ford's center of operations in the north-central Business trips to the Upper Peninsula were common for Ford. The middle of the routethe Just after you cross the Peshekee River, follow the first paved road north. in a time where real wood was used!) Henry Ford wasnt just financially invested in the Upper Peninsula. Still somewhat secretive today, the Huron Mountain Club is a private reserve occupying about 20,000 acres of timberland and lakes in the Huron Mountains, a small chain that rises to about 2000 feet on the east side of Keewenaw Bay, part of Lake Superior. We found one copy at the University of Michigan's Bentley Historical Library. gaining membership in the Huron Mountain ClubFord purchased additional The factory also produced almost all of its own furniture, including all of the tables and chairs in the company lunchroom. Though Ford was unable to join them, the three men set out on a two week trek to the Adirondack Mountains, roughing it with a staff of a cook and five servants. segment through the Huron Mountains west of Big Baysaw very little It was during this time industrialist Henry Ford had purchased hundreds He then hired Big Bay, Michigan 49808 remained on official maps and documents through the 1930s, all the while "This is actually a whole lot simpler than it seems," said Mayor. That the state of Michigan would take the extraordinary step of granting that power to a private person shows the extent of Henry Fords political and economic might.