North Country History with Rob Burg
Your podcast on the Forest History of the Great Lakes Region. The forests of the Great Lakes have been home to people for centuries and have provided great resources and wealth, shelter, food, and recreation for many. But in the wake of these uses, the region has been environmentally damaged from deforestation, fire, and erosion, and are still recovering to this day. I will be your guide for exploring the forests and sharing stories of the forests and the people who have called them home.
About Rob Burg: Hi! I'm an environmental historian specializing on the forest history of the Great Lakes Region. I am a mostly lifelong Michigan resident and studied at Eastern Michigan University for both my undergraduate degree in History and graduate studies in Historic Preservation. My 35-year professional life has mostly been in history museums, including the Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village, the Michigan History Museum, and the Stuhr Museum of the Prairie Pioneer. I began my environmental history career with managing both the Hartwick Pines Logging Museum and the Civilian Conservation Corps Museum for the Michigan History Museum system, directing the Lovells Museum of Trout Fishing History, archivist for the Devereaux Memorial Library in Grayling, Michigan, and as the Interpretive Resources Coordinator for the Stuhr Museum of the Prairie Pioneer in Grand Island, Nebraska. I am proud that the first person to ever call me an environmental historian was none other than Dr. William Cronon, the dean of American Environmental History.
North Country History with Rob Burg
Deward: The Last of Michigan's Lumber Boomtowns
In this final episode of the first season of the podcast, I am recording this remotely from the old lumber ghost town of Deward, Michigan. Deward lived as an actual town for just twelve years, 1900-1912, while the David Ward Estate logged off the last great pine lumber holdings of David Ward, Michigan's "Pine King" at the tail end of the white pine lumber boom.
Deward was located on the banks of the Manistee River near where Antrim, Crawford, Kalkaska, and Otsego counties meet. This was in the center of Ward's last great holdings of white pine lumber. David Ward was one of the great figures of Michigan's 19th century lumber industry. Born in 1822 in Keene, New York in the Adirondack Mountains, David Ward first came with his father to Michigan, to assist him in timber cruising for Eastern clients in the newly opened Michigan Territory. His family soon followed his father and David to Michigan, settling in Newport in St. Clair County (today's Marine City). David Ward followed in his father's trade as a surveyor and timber cruiser, however he tried other employment before settling completely into the lumber industry. He worked as a school teacher, a commercial fisherman, and even studied medicine at the University of Michigan, but it was in the lumber industry that he would make his fortune.
As a timber cruiser, David Ward was hired by others to seek out and purchase prime timberlands. Part of his payment was the right to reserve some of these purchases for himself. Ward was able to string together landholdings all over Michigan, primarily in the Saginaw River Valley and in the region of the headwaters of the AuSable and Manistee rivers.
David Ward died in 1900 at the age of 78. His will stipulated that his heirs had to liquidate his timber holdings within twelve years. A sawmill was located on the Manistee River with a rail connection to Ward's own railroad, the Detroit and Charlevoix Railroad. The mill was completed in late 1900, though logging operations had already begun in the area, with logs initially shipped by rail to other mills. The mill cut its last logs in the Spring of 1912 and the town quickly shutdown.
Michigan's last great stand of Eastern White Pine had been cut.
EPISODE RESOURCES
Leech, Carl Addison. Deward: A Lumberman’s Ghost Town. Michigan History Magazine. Lansing, Michigan. Vol. 28, No. 1, January-March, 1944.
Maybee, Rolland H. Michigan’s White Pine Era 1840-1900. Lansing, Michigan. Michigan Bureau of History. 1988.
Ward, David. The Autobiography of David Ward. New York. Privately Printed. 1912.
Mabel Edwards Secord Papers. Michigan Historical Collections, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan. Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Ward Family Papers, 1872-1964. Michigan Historical Collections, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan. Ann Arbor, Michigan.