MICHIGAN ROADS AND FORESTS. 



WHEN BOATS WERE 



SUPREME AT BAY CITY 



The opening this season by the D. & C. 

 Navigation Company of a steamboat line be- 

 tween Detroit and Bay City brings back to 

 the memory of the old settlers the days of 

 thirty-five and forty years ago when the vast 

 traffic of this region was handled by steamers 

 and sajling vessels, says E. D. Cowles, the vet- 

 eran editor of the Bay City Tribune. 



The first vessel built on the Saginaw river 

 was the Buena Vista, a small steamer in 1849. 

 Her first trip to Bay City was an event of such 

 importance that years after it was a frequent 

 topic among the pioneers. 



In the early fifties a regular line of steamers 

 made trips between Detroit and Bay City. The 

 old sidewheelers Susan Ward, the Dove, For- 

 est Queen and Huron were frequent visitors to 

 these waters fifty years ago. These were all 

 steamers and carried passengers and merchan- 

 dise exclusively. The only other way in which 

 to reach lower lake places was by a rude forest 

 road through the wilderness to Detroit. 



There are people now living in the Saginaw 

 valley who came here from Detroit on the 

 Susan Ward in 1852 and 1853. 



Later the George L. Clinton, City of San- 

 dusky, Magnet and other steamers were put 

 on the line, and still later the shore line of 

 steamers were put on between Bay City and 

 Alpena and this route was in operation many 

 years. The Huron, Dove, Metropolis, Geo. L. 

 Dunlap, John Sherman, Lake Breeze, Arundel 

 and other well-known craft made regular trips. 



The freighting of lumber, lath, salt and shin- 

 gles early called for many vessels. The lum- 

 ber trade was largely handled by sail vessels 

 and bargef, while salt, shingles and lath were 

 carried by steamers. Before 1870 there were a 

 number of propeller lines running between 

 Bay City and Cleveland and intermediate 

 ports. Among the well-known craft remem- 

 bered were the J. L. Hurd, Phil Sheridan, An- 

 nie L. Craig, Benton, Bertschy and others. 

 The Benton still floats the great lakes, but 

 most of the others have laid their bones in 

 the graveyard of the past. 



Many boats were built on the river for 

 freighting purposes. In 1865 no less, than 

 seventy steamers were running on Saginaw 

 river and to outside ports, and during the sea- 

 son of navigation of 1868 no less than 2,961 

 vessels of all kinds entered the Saginaw river. 



The same year in addition to regular steam- 

 ers and sail vessels sixty-six barges were en- 

 gaged in freighting lumber products from this 

 river to lower lake ports. These craft carried 

 from 400,000,000 to over 800,000,000 feet of 

 lumber out of the river every eight months of 

 navigation for years. 



Before the railroads stepped in to capture 

 the traffic regular lines of river steamers 

 plied between Bay City and up-river ports, and 

 the names of the Mason, Daniel Ball, Cora B., 

 Reindeer, Reynolds and W. R. Burt are still 

 recalled. 



From 1867 to 1891 there were freighted out 

 of Sandusky river by boat something over 

 fourteen billion feet of lumber besides hun- 

 dreds of millions of shingles and lath and hun- 

 <liv<ls of thousands of barrels of salt. Then 

 there were staves, heading, square timber and 

 other forest products representing figures that 

 almost pass belief. 



And now the mills that lined the banks of 

 the river we nearly all gone. The hum of the 

 saw is co^phed to a few mills in Bay City, and 

 there is only one left in Saginaw. The mills 

 that were capable of turning out a billion feet 

 of manufactured pine lumber in a single sea- 

 son of eight months have nearly all shrouded 

 their fires forever. 



The railroads have revolutionized the com 

 merce of the valley and wrested from the fleets 

 of white-winged sails and the swift steamers a 

 vast commerce. 



A PERFECT CIRCULAR SAW. 



Charles H. Douglas, of Quincy, has finally 

 perfected a circular saw on which he has been 

 working for the past 15 years. He has also 

 evolved the machinery with which to make 

 the saw. He believes his new saw will be 

 adopted by every saw mill in the country as 

 soon as its merits become fully known. He 

 will try and organize a company in Quincy for 

 the purpose of manufacturing and putting the 

 saw on the market, but if the people of that 

 city do not take kindly to the proposition, 

 there are a number of other cities in the state 

 that the Investor knows of that are looking 

 for new industries, and need only to be shown 

 that the proposition is all right and the 

 finances will be forthcoming. Under these cir- 

 cumstances Mr. Douglas ought not to have 

 much trouble in floating a company and getting 

 his saw on the market promptly. 



Briefly, in the Douglas saw the form and 

 construction of the teeth and their action upon 

 logs are radically different from ordinary saws, 

 making less noise in operation and requiring 

 a little more than 50 per cent of power to do 

 the work of the old saws. The remarkable 

 feature of the Douglas saw is that it produces 

 a surface as smooth and level as if it had been 

 planed. The saw will cut across or with the 

 grain of timber with equal ease and perfection. 

 The ordinary saw does its work by tearing the 

 material which it saws. 



The teeth of the Douglas saw are formed 

 with circular throats, and from the cutting 

 point to the rear of each tooth there is a 

 clearance on the back of less than five degrees 

 from the line of circumference of the saw. 

 On one side of the back of each tooth there is 

 a rib, which widens the chisel cut sufficiently 

 to make the walls of the kerf clear the body 

 of the blade. This takes the place of the 

 ordinary set of other saws and leaves the 

 lumber smooth. By the use of a simple sharp- 

 ener, invented for the purpose, these saws can 

 be kept in order for one-fourth the expense of 

 sharpening the saws in general use. 



It was while Mr. Douglas was connected 

 with a large firm in the manufacture of wood- 

 working machinery he came to the conclusion 

 that the saw was by far the most important 

 of all machines or implements in wood-work- 

 ing, and yet by far the least scientific or 

 perfect. He determined to attempt an im- 

 provement upon it. Mr. Douglas says: "If I 

 had known how much study, expense and time 

 it would require to make a scientific saw, I 

 think I should have hesitated in my resolve." 



PIONEER MILL BURNED. 



The old Flood saw mill on the West Side at 

 Bay City, which burned the other day, was the 

 oldest landmark of the lumbering industry on the 

 Saginaw river. It was built in 1862 for the late 

 John Drake and was calculated for a capacity of 

 4,000,000 feet in a single season, being equipped 

 with a single circular and mulay saw. It was a 

 crack mill for those days. In 1863 it manufac- 

 tured 500,000 feet of lumber and from 1,500,000 

 f o 3,800,000 feet every season thereafter until 

 1868, when it passed into the hands of Elisha C. 

 Litchfield. In 1881 its capacity was increased by 

 a practical rebuild to 15,000.000 feet and a few 

 years later it was purchased by Hon. John Welch, 

 at one time mayor of Saginaw, who removed to 

 Bay City after acquiring the property. He oper- 

 ated it until his death a few years later, since 

 which it has been known as the Flood mill and 

 operated by John J. Flood. The mill has been 

 idle since the spring of 1907. 



SOLVES A DIFFICULTY. 



J. W. Wells Lumber Co., of Menominee and 

 elsewhere, has apparently solved the problem 

 of the hardwood log yard. The apparatus con- 

 sists of two tall A-frames or towers, one 

 placed at the end of the mill and the other 

 many hundred feet away, at the end of the 

 log yard. Between them is stretched an over- 

 head cable on which runs a carriage with 

 suitable attachments. At the mill and taking 

 steam from the mill boilers, is the cableway 

 engine which operates the device. Under the 



span is the hot pond and the log yard and on 

 either side of them the railroad tracks for the 

 log delivery. 



The hardwood being not floatable it comes 

 to the mill largely by railroad, and in order to 

 get constant and regular supplies it is neces- 

 sary to deck or pile a large reserve of logs at 

 the mill yard. Then as required they will be 

 singled out and drawn to the mill, and further- 

 more, in the winter months it is advisable to- 

 have them pass through a hot pond before 

 sawing. This requires considerable labor of 

 men and teams. 



By this cableway cars can be unloaded on 

 their arrival, the logs decked 10 to 20 feet high 

 in the yard, and. as required picked up, dipped 

 into the pond and then conveyed to the log 

 chain at the mill. It is a remarkable sight to 

 see logs weighing several tons going through 

 the air at the rate of 800 feet a minute as if 

 they were mere straws. 



The cableway has as yet had no difficulty in 

 keeping this mill supplied, unloading all cars 

 and properly decking the logs. 



FEW LOGS IN DRIVE. 



The logs have been coming down the Paint 

 river for the last two weeks. The volume of logs 

 is in sorry contrast to that which came down in 

 years past, there being a mere handful, compara- 

 tively, says a Crystal Falls correspondent. There 

 are about 3,000,000 feet of timber in the Paint and 

 its tributaries this year and most of it is away 

 up towards the head waters. Some logs passed 

 during the week from Nett river that were put 

 in by McDermott, of Iron River, two years ago. 



BIG CUT OF SAW-LOGS. 



Operating six camps of its own the past winter 

 season, and taking the cut of fifteen jobbers, the 

 Hamilton & Merryman Lumber Company has a 

 stock of 16.000,000 feet of logs with which to 

 supply its sawmills this year. The timber consists 

 of pine, hardwood, hemlock, cedar, tamarack, 

 basswood and spruce, and the great bulk of it 

 was cut in the Menominee river country. Not- 

 withstanding the lack of snow the early part of 

 the winter, the logging season was a very suc- 

 cessful one. The Hamilton & Merryman cut was 

 one of the very largest in Upper Michigan. 



MUSKEGON LUMBER NOTES. 



The first lumber shipment of the season out of 

 Muskegon was made last week. It is probable 

 that the few remaining Muskegon mills will not 

 ship all their lumber during the coming summer, 

 although there is enough pine piled on the docks 

 to make as heavy shipments as those made in the 

 past two years. The lumber consists mostly of 

 white pine and Norway pine. It is not improb- 

 able that half of the 15,000,000 feet which, accord- 

 ing to estimate is piled on the various wharves, 

 will be held over until next year, awaiting better 

 prices. 



The amount of lumber cut in Muskegon this 

 year will be small. The Thayer mill has closed 

 and Gow & Campbell and Frank Alberts & Sons- 

 will have a short run and close their mills early- 

 Plans are under way at Cadillac for a shingle 

 and lumber mill to be owned and managed 

 by Herman Allen, who formerly conducted a 

 similar plant in that city. It is expected that 

 William Kroll, of the Sparrow-Kroll Lumber 

 Company, says that he anticipates a lively 

 season at the mills at Kenton. The season's 

 cut will approximate about 20,000,000 feet. 

 The mill has already been in operation three 

 weeks. A night shift has been put on, and 

 from now on things will be lively in the 

 lumbering town. 



John Nester, of the Nester Estate Com- 

 pany's mill at Baraga, says that the new mill 

 is a permanent institution and will give em- 

 ployment to a good-sized force of men for 

 years to come. Mr. Nester has recently re- 

 turned from Europe, and is well on the road 

 to recovery from a serious ailment which 

 necessitated several operations. 



