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MICHIGAN ROADS AND FORESTS 



IF YOU WANT 



GOOD ROADS 



BUILD 'EM WITH THE 



Port Huron Dumping and Spreading Wagons 



AND ROLL 'EM WITH THE 



Port Huron Road Roller 



Write us for Ways to Save Money in Road Building 



Port Huron Engine & Thresher Co., 



TO BUILD A NEW 



CITY IN MICHIGAN 



Just as in the days when lumber barons 

 held sway in Michigan's wilderness and both 

 civilization and commercial industry centered 

 first of all within sound of the screaming saws, 

 Xels Michaelson plans to have a city spring 

 up among the jack pines of the Houghton 

 lake country. 



That the shrill cry of the saw blades in 

 his big new mill shall herald the opening 

 of a little known, seldom traveled, but uni- 

 formly fertile and promising country, is a part 

 of this man's ambition. Already a great rail- 

 way system has yielded to his demand for 

 transportation facilities, and a crazy strip of 

 track has been laid to the big mill in the 

 center of his vast timber preserves in Mis- 

 saukee and Roscommon. Railway surveyors 

 have laid out the new depot site in a city 

 whose streets, unmarked save by civil engi- 

 neers' stakes, and whose buildings are yet to 

 materialize, exists only in the plans of the 

 man whose name it will bear and whose monu- 

 ment it will be. 



For four miles, where the Muskegon river 

 winds through the estates of the Michaelson 

 Lumber Company, the water is hidden under 

 millions of feet of logs waiting to be ripped 

 into marketable lumber in the big Michaelson 

 mill. Within a few weeks the big handsaws 

 will begin cutting timber which promises at 

 least twenty years of uninterrupted and profit- 

 able work. 



The Michaelson mill is no temporary shack. 

 It is a permanent structure, as strong and 

 rugged as the man who built it. Michaelson 

 intended it should be a suitable beginning for 

 his boom of the Houghton lake country. His 

 sawmill brought the railway to the doorway 

 of his city to be. lie intends the city and 

 the developing country in its vicinity shall 

 justify constantly increasing and improving 

 railway service. 



It is a far cry from the Michaelson of to- 

 day to the city of the Michaelson Lumber 

 ( V.mpam '- plans and ambition. For fifteen 



miles the new Grand Rapids & Indiana branch 

 out of Lake City dips into sharp grades, rises 

 over abrupt knolls and twists around pre- 

 carious curves to the Michaelson mills. Its 

 tiny rails creak and dip under the feather- 

 weight of old-time rolling stock, and the road- 

 bed sags until box cars and flats and coaches 

 roll and pitch like ships at sea. 



But it is a railway, far better, perhaps, than 

 many a logging road that one day witnessed 

 the coming of Pullmans and express service. 

 Some day this Houghton lake country is 

 bound to fulfill the promise of Michaelson 

 and come into its own. Indeed, it will be 

 but a few weeks before the present semi- 

 weekly train service will be made tri-weekly, 

 and within a few weeks thereafter the Grand 

 Rapids & Indiana has promised a daily run to 

 the Michaelson terminal at the headwaters of 

 the Muskegon. 



Today a queer little mixed train leaves 

 Cadillac at 5 a. m. Tuesdays and Fridays and 

 threads its way first to Lake City, the end 

 of the regular Lake City division, and then 

 goes rolling off into the woods at never faster 

 than ten miles an hour. The track won't 

 stand more than that. The Cadillac "chain 

 gang" gets the Michaelson, or, as they call 

 it, "the woods run." That is, the freight serv- 

 ice train crews working first in and first out 

 are assigned in their regular order to the trip 

 into Michaelson. They don't like it. It means 

 a long day, slow, ticklish work in switching, 

 and, because of the late return at night, a bad 

 run for the following day or none at all. 



The country through which this "streak of 

 rust" leads is not materially different from 

 three-quarters of the territory where pioneer 

 lumbering interests wielded ruthless axes. 

 Forest and brush fires have made the work 

 of destruction more complete. On every side, 

 clear to the horizon, black, ugly stumps, like 

 broken teeth, rear themselves fantastic 

 shapes out of keeping with the fresh young 

 trees that struggle up each year in spite of 

 frequent fires. Occasionally some pioneer, 

 braver and more energetic than the average, 

 has cleared a field or plowed about the stumps. 

 In every instance the crops are wonderful in 

 their yield. While six or eight weeks later 

 than southern Michigan farmers do their plant- 

 ing they invariably catch up and are ready 

 for harvest simultaneously with the products 

 of two hundred miles to the south. 



Xels Michaelson knows the possibilities of 

 the country. His plan to boom it, to see the 

 ugly stumps giving way to waving green and 

 crops, the jack pine replaced by fruit 



Port Huron, Mich. 



trees or cut down to make room for city 

 homes and the varied industries of the modern 

 municipality is no idle dream. 



What is to be the main street of Michael- 

 son leads directly through a dense clump of 

 jack pine. The first real settler in the new 

 city is Kdward Sorenson, and his concrete 

 store building is under construction. The 

 concrete basement walls face the main street 

 to be. which will lead in a direct line toward 

 the big mills. Besides the mills, separated 

 from the actual city site to afford protection 

 from fire for the growing lumber yard, the 

 shingle factory, the office shacks, stables and 

 rough boarding house, Sorenson has the only 

 building in sight. He is literally Michaelson's 

 pioneer. 



Goods roads, even from the standpoint of 

 the automobile enthusiast, lead into this coun- 

 try as far as what is to be the city of Michael- 

 son. It is one of the lumber company's plans 

 to build a straight, wide, modern automobile 

 road through the four miles to the shore of 

 Houghton lake. The company will lend its 

 aid to the establishment of a summer resort 

 on the lake shores that will be in keeping 

 with the natural resources of the place. 



The Michaelson company owns a great 

 portion of Missaukce and Roscommon coun- 

 ties bordering the lake. There is some virgin 

 timber on its holdings. It is practically cov- 

 ered with second growth lumber of sufficient 

 size to be of marketable value. It is esti- 

 mated by the capable timber cruisers of the 

 company that there is timber enough on the 

 Michaelson preserves to run the mill from 

 twenty to twenty-live years. Two years ago 

 Michaelson's plans for the Houghton lake 

 district had their beginning when wood gangs 

 of the company began cutting and skidding 

 timber into the Muskegon river. Today this 

 timber has been floated downstream to the 

 boom's opposite the site of the new mill and 

 the shingle factory. Cedar for the shingle- 

 making industry was given preference, but 

 there are millions of feet of logs waiting to 

 be floated into the .-awmill channel, drawn up 

 on the skids and pushed through the vertical 

 band saws, which have a capacity of 50,000 

 feet a day. 



The day.- of ruthless slaughter of trees is 

 at an end. No more will stumps be left 

 rearing their heads above the surrounding 

 sward. The Michaelson company's men cut 

 the tree right at its base. Every foot is saved. 

 Handsaws have succeeded the faster cutting 

 but wasteful circular blades. Economy is the 

 watchword in lumbering today. 



Gradually the Michaelson company'.- woods- 



