CHAPTER 1
Introduction:
Michigan was first seen by European explorers in the early 16th Century.
150 years later, in the mid-17th Century, the French had established posts
in Michigan and were trading furs with the indigenous population for export
to Europe. During the 18th Century Michigan was considered to be at
the “margins of white settlement” (Meinig, 1993: p43), whilst a hundred years
later the region had a growing population, fuelled by westward migration,
and was a battleground of “frenetic speculation” (Lingerman, 1980: p98).
Consequently, this chapter will discuss the “economic, demographic and environmental
forces” (Nelson, 2001: p1) that have combined to reshape Michigan from Imperial
frontier to southern industrial heartland and northern landscape of consumption.
French Colonial Rule and the Fur Trade:
Perhaps the single greatest influence on Michigan’s initial development
was its system of lakes and rivers (Dunbar & May, 1970; Meinig, 1993).
Michigan consists of two large peninsulas (See Figure 1) whose shores are
washed by four of the five ‘Great Lakes’ – Michigan, Huron, Superior and
Erie (See Figure 4). As well as the ‘Great Lakes’, Michigan has an
extensive river system and thousands of inland lakes (Dunbar & May, 1970;
See Appendix 1). This fact has not only “influenced the activities
of the inhabitants in every period of Michigan’s history” (Dunbar & May,
1970: p2), but also opened up the region to European explorers in the 16th
Century (Catton, 1976).
The first Europeans to see Michigan were French explorers searching for
gold and a “shorter way of reaching the riches of the Orient” (Dunbar &
May, 1970: p21). Unlike the British, barred in their Atlantic colonies
by mountains, the French were able to gain access to the interior via the
St. Lawrence River (See Figure 5) (Dunbar & May, 1970). Although
they found neither the route to the Orient nor easy wealth, the French noted
the economic potential of the fur trade. By the end of the 16th Century,
the French had “initiated efforts to organise the full-scale exploitation
of this source of wealth” (Dunbar & May, 1970: p24). Initially,
trading was confined to posts near the St. Lawrence River, but as the trade
grew and the Beaver population declined, the main sources of furs became
removed from these posts. As Dunbar and May (1970: p26) suggest,
“The need to find new sources of furs to maintain the continued growth
of the fur trade exerted an almost irresistible expansionist demand that
the boundaries of the Colony be extended farther inland”
Easy access to the ‘Great Lakes’, an abundant supply of furs and an extensive
river system, made Michigan the perfect place to fulfil these demands (Catton,
1976). Expansion of the colony, however, created problems for the
French. In the mid-17th Century, fearful that they would lose control
of the fur trade to the Iroquois or Britain, the colony was put under direct
control of the French Crown. Consequently, shiploads of settlers, soldiers
and missionaries were sent to the region to make New France a “respectable
representative of French power in America” (Dunbar & May, 1970: p34).
The French also established “outposts in the interior as advanced bases for
the fur trade” (Dunbar & May, 1970: p27; Meinig, 1993). The posts
at Detroit, Mackinaw City and Fort St. Joseph (See Figure 6) were established
for both their fur trading potential and to give the French command of the
main travel routes in and around the region (Dunbar & May, 1970; Meinig,
1993).
In the latter years of the 17th Century, British fur traders began to encroach
on the French colony and openly operated in the Straits of Mackinac near
the centre of French influence – St. Ignace and Fort Michilimackinac.
In addition, the British aided Iroquois again began to attack French settlements,
including Montreal. The French responded by building more forts, encouraging
Missionary activity in strategic areas and by attacking Iroquois villages.
Defeated, the Iroquois signed a peace and neutrality pact with the French
in 1701 (Dunbar & May, 1970). With a major barrier to expansion
removed, the settlement of Detroit was founded the same year (Catton, 1976).
The colony’s Governor, Cadillac, wanted Detroit to be “an authentic settlement,
inhabited not simply by soldiers, traders and missionaries… but by French
civilians and their families” (Dunbar & May, 1970: p54) and granted
land rights to the settlers. French hopes that Detroit would become
a major agricultural centre able to supply the outposts in the north of
Michigan never came to fruition. Detroit remained primarily a fur trading
centre and was not large enough to fulfil its hoped for agricultural role.
Instead, “great amounts of money, time and labor (sic) still had to be expended
to transport food from the St. Lawrence settlements” (Dunbar & May, 1970:
p59).
British Colonial Rule and the Growth of Detroit:
The French remained in control of Michigan until 1760 when the British
defeated them in Montreal and occupied the territory (Meinig, 1993).
By the mid-18th Century, the British had begun to realise the economic importance
of the large quantities of cash crops and raw materials exported to Britain.
Increased British interest in the region, therefore, was less to do with
the potential of the fur trade than the desire to expand agricultural lands
(Dunbar & May, 1970). British colonists in the Ohio Valley saw
Michigan as ripe for agricultural development, whilst the French wanted to
retain the wilderness essential for the fur trade (Dunbar & May, 1970).
The war that followed was less about who controlled the territory, than
how the land would be best exploited economically. In the end, as
Catton argues “the English brought capitalism to the North Woods” (1976:
p59), not through agriculture, but by ending the French fur trade monopoly.
The British administered the territory for 36 years as part of Canada, but
control was never firmly established. There were several uprisings
by the indigenous tribes and the territory was claimed for the United States
after the War of Independence in 1776. Britain’s eventual withdrawal
from Michigan in 1793 was influenced by a serious decline in the fur trade
caused by the French Revolution and the increasingly heavy costs of maintaining
and garrisoning forts (Dunbar & May, 1970; Catton, 1976).
The Decline of the Fur Trade:
The fur trade continued to play an important role in the development of
Michigan until the 1830s, when both demand and supply again collapsed (Catton,
1976). Whilst the success of John Jacob Astor’s American Fur Company
had helped to establish both Detroit and Mackinac as substantial settlements,
it had also destroyed the wildlife essential to both the Native Americans
and the fur traders. The Native Americans, already under pressure to
cede or sell their lands, now had little choice and by 1842, all of Michigan
was in American hands (Catton, 1976; Meinig, 1993).
Canals and Michigan’s Development:
Initial attempts to encourage settlement near Detroit were not successful.
It was expensive to ship farm produce over land to the populous eastern
seaboard and Michigan was generally seen as hard to reach (Dunbar &
May, 1970; Catton, 1976). In 1825, however, the Great Lakes again
played a decisive role in Michigan’s development when the Erie Canal between
Buffalo and the Hudson was opened. Produce could now be shipped from
Detroit across lake Erie to Buffalo and then onto New York via the canal
(Meinig, 1993). A year after the canal opened, Detroit was shipping
wheat, flour, whiskey and timber worth $200,000 to the eastern markets (Catton,
1976). Four years later, a canal was opened between Lake Ontario and
Lake Erie allowing freight from Detroit and Cleveland to be shipped to Montreal.
The “remote wilderness of Michigan had… been moved hundreds of miles closer
to civilisation” (Catton, 1976: p74) by the canals. This relatively
quick and inexpensive form of transport coupled with low land prices, encouraged
the westward migration of farmers and merchants into Michigan (Meinig, 1993).
Although the canals were later to prove invaluable to the lumber industry,
it was the agricultural possibilities that initially attracted migrants to
Michigan. In fact, many saw the forest as an “encumbrance, rather than
an asset” (Catton, 1976: p83; Dunbar & May, 1970). Trees were felled
only to create farmland and the wood was used to build the settlements themselves.
The nearest market for lumber was the Eastern United States, but that was
supplied from nearby Maine. There was no market for lumber in the West
and consequently timber had no cash value (Catton, 1976). In fact,
as Catton (1976) suggests, most of the original settlers wanted the “forests
cut down as rapidly as possible” (p102) so that Michigan’s southern farming
belt could be reproduced all the way to the Straits of Mackinac.
The Growth of the Lumber Industry:
By 1837, however, lumber was of growing importance to Michigan’s
development. The West was becoming what Meinig has described as “the
great frontier” (ibid) where settlers were “penetrating the wilderness,
breaking the land, creating farms, founding towns, and forming civil societies”
(Meinig, 1993: p223; Mahoney, 1990). Michigan was well placed to supply
lumber to a growing Chicago and new settlements in Illinois and the prairies
to the West. It not only had an abundant supply of tall, straight Pine
trees, but also the river and transport infrastructure needed to exploit
and ship them (Dunbar & May, 1970; Catton, 1976). Logs could easily
be floated down river from the logging camp to the sawmill and the lakes
could be used as Mill Ponds. The rivers and lakes also provided a means
of getting the timber to market and for transporting men and supplies to
and from the camps (Catton, 1976). The potential for lumber in Michigan
was so great that by 1847, Michigan’s output was “at least a billion dollars
greater than the value of the gold dug in California at the time” (Catton,
1976: p108). The boom attracted speculators, merchants and lumbermen
and settlements grew up all over Michigan during this period (Meinig, 1993).
Most of these settlements were ‘paper towns’, “founded by often absentee
speculators with the profit motive uppermost” (Lingerman, 1980: p108) to
service nearby logging camps. The use of the rivers and lakes
by the lumber industry meant that the principal settlements were established
along rivers and often served as ports. Existing settlements also benefited
and Saginaw, a former fur trading post, became a trading centre for the several
sawmills in the area (Dunbar & May, 1970).
Railroads and the Expansion Northwards:
The lumber industry was initially concentrated in the southern part of
Michigan, which was closer to the markets in the West. By the 1860s,
however, the industry was beginning to move north and had reached the Upper
Peninsula by the 1880s (Catton, 1976; Meinig, 1993). The northwards
move was fuelled by the need, like the fur trade, to exploit new resources
and made possible by the coming of the railroad (Dunbar & May, 1976).
The railroads that existed at this time connected southern Michigan to localities
in the East and West and a route north was seen as both impractical and unnecessary.
If the lumber industry changed the pattern of railroad development in Michigan,
the railroads “touched the lumber industry like a bucket of turpentine tossed
on a fire” (Catton, 1976: p144). The railroads not only reduced the
lumber industry’s reliance on logging streams, which froze in the winter,
but also gave them the means to expand their area of operations well away
from the rivers (Catton, 1976). By the 1880s, many lumber towns had
no nearby logging stream and manufacturing was no longer seasonal.
In 1882, there were 89 logging railroads in operation and by 1900, 7,945
miles of mainline track (See Figure 7) to haul freight all over and out of
the State (Dunbar & May, 1970). The two Peninsulas were connected
by a ferry, owned an operated by the railroad companies, in 1888 (Dunbar
& May, 1970).
As the railroad became the State’s dominant form of transport, Michigan
emerged as the principal lumber producing state in the United States (Dunbar
& May, 1970).
The Decline of the Lumber Industry:
During this period, however, the railroad had the “capacity to build and
simultaneously destroy” (Lingerman, 1980: p164). Whilst the railroad
did bring prosperity to Michigan by easing access to natural resources and
by providing transport for agricultural produce, “the coming of the railroad
brought about the eclipse of some of the port towns created by the canal”
(Lingerman, 1980: p161). Singapore, near the mouth of the Kalamazoo
River, became a ghost town, unable to compete with the railroad (Catton,
1976). The railroads also exacerbated the lumber industry’s attitude
of “take what there is, take all of it, and take it as fast as you can” (Catton,
1976: p102) and by the end of the 19th Century, the Pine forests of the Lower
Peninsula were virtually all cut over (Dunbar & May, 1970). The
gradual decline of the lumbering industry also began to heighten the divide
between northern and southern Michigan. The southern part of the State,
dominated by Detroit and with good connections East and West, benefited from
the investment capital created by the lumber industry and, by the turn of
the century, was attracting new industries, such as car manufacturing (Dunbar
& May, 1970). The southern counties also sustained a viable
agricultural industry. By contrast, the Upper Peninsula and the northern
counties of the Lower Peninsula were considered the wilderness (Catton, 1976).
The lumber industry and railroad companies, themselves under threat, sought
to meet the challenge by selling cut over lands at low prices for farming,
but as Catton suggests, “the deforested country was good for growing Pine
trees and not much good for anything else” (1976: p157). Consequently,
the northern Lower Peninsula was littered with ghost towns, abandoned farms
and boarded up shops (Catton, 1976).
The Growth of Tourism in the North:
Whilst the lumber industry continued on a much smaller scale in the Upper
Peninsula the “wilderness that had been killed off with such energy… started
to creep back” in the northern Lower Peninsula (Catton, 1976: p157).
The railroads serving the Straits, Petoskey and Mackinaw City found that
tourism was a potential new source of income. As Catton suggests, “northern
Michigan may have been a fine place for some people to make money, but it
was an even better place to relax and enjoy life” (Catton, 1976: p159).
The railroad companies not only began to advertise the attractiveness of
northern Michigan to anglers, hunters and those businessmen from busier places
wanting relaxation and recreation, but also built the resort hotels and summer
cottages needed to house them (Catton, 1976). As in other wilderness
areas, transport “opened up parts of the country to rapid and convenient
travel, a development that facilitated the touristic exploitation of the
scenic resources” (Hudson, 2001: p2). Michigan’s forests, lakes and
rivers were again to play an integral part in northern Michigan’s fortunes
and by 1900, many communities, laid low by the loss of the lumber industry,
were in the process of becoming resort towns (Meinig, 1998; Dunbar &
May, 1970).
The Industrial Dominance of Southern Michigan:
The early part of the 20th Century was marked by a growth in car use, the
coming of the telephone and “broader areas of day to day activity and communication”
(McKelvey, 1969: p84). The United States’ entry into World War I in
1917 continued the State’s growing industrialisation and factories in southern
Michigan provided many vital products for the war effort. Although
car production continued at a reduced level, many of the plants were converted
to war output. The levels of production were so high, that Michigan
was referred to as the “Arsenal of Democracy” (Dunbar & May, 1970: p540)
by the beginning of World War II. The success of manufacturing
was not uniform, however, and was predominantly located in the south east
of the State, close to the East-West rail and road links. Having replaced
previous forms of economic activity, manufacturing was also attracting people
to the southern, urban part of the State (Dunbar & May, 1970).
During the early part of the 20th Century, one in eight people lived in Detroit
and the car industry had made it one of the nation’s major cities (Dunbar
& May, 1970). The northern, rural, part of the State, however,
saw a sharp decline in farming (See Figure 8) and was marked by a move towards
market gardening and particularly fruit farming (Dunbar & May, 1970).
With few opportunities in the north of Michigan, many migrated to Detroit
and the car industry and it was during this period that many of the south’s
rural towns, such as Ann Arbor, began to become the urban centres they are
today (Dunbar & May, 1970). The northern part of the State was
particularly hard hit by the depression of the 1930s despite attempts to
rekindle the lumber industry (Dunbar & May, 1970). The Second World
War and the change to military output, again hastened migration to the southern
part of the State.
[Figure 8: Number of Farms in Michigan 1900-1959. Dunbar &
May, 1970: p579]
Road Building and Tourism:
Tourism continued to be an important part of northern Michigan’s economy,
although seasonal in nature. As Dunbar & May argue, “success of
tourism… became the economic hope for the northern part of the Lower Peninsula”
(1973: p444) during the early part of the 20th Century. Although the
railroad continued to serve the northern counties, the key to tourism’s
success, however, would be the convenience of the car and the region’s recreational
attractions were used to argue the case for North-South highways (Lingerman,
1980; Dunbar & May, 1970). The Interstate Highways programme of
the 1950s linked Detroit and Chicago with I94 and Detroit and Lansing with
I96. Interstate 75, linking Detroit to northern Michigan, reduced
the driving time to the Upper Peninsula from all day to 4-5 hours (Dunbar
& May, 1970). The Mackinac Bridge linking the two Peninsulas was
completed in 1957 and ended the bottleneck created by ferries at Mackinaw
City. Whilst tourism flourished, hopes that the bridge would stimulate
other parts of the north’s economy were not initially fulfilled (Dunbar
& May, 1970).
The Future of the North:
The latter part of the 20th Century has seen a slight migratory trend away
from large cities towards small towns (Lingerman, 1980). Improved
transportation and communications, including Pellston Regional Airport,
computer networks and the fax machine have brought the north of Michigan
increasingly closer to the rest of the State. The north has been seen
as providing a better quality of life than the southern part of the State,
which has experienced high unemployment and racial tension with the decline
of the car industry (Nelson, 2001; Lingerman, 1980). The effect on
the economies of small towns in the north, however, has been negligible
because the migrants have been “wealthy second home owners, footloose professionals
and telecommuters” (Nelson, 2001: p398). Although tourism and the
information industry provide economic opportunities for the north of Michigan,
“small rural communities on what once was the American frontier face many
threats from a still changing environment” (Norris-Baker, 1999: p241).
Tourism and its associated service industries do not produce the number
of jobs, or wage levels, required to support the local population.
Migration has also forced land prices up and the young often have to move
away to find work or buy property (Norris-Baker, 1999). Consequently,
many small towns continue to cling to the notion that “industrialisation,
improved transportation, mineral exploitation [and] hometown loyalty” (Atherton
in Jackson & Schultz, 1972: p429) will solve their problems.
Cheboygan in Context:
This chapter has so far attempted to explain how economic, demographic
and environmental forces have shaped the development of Michigan.
The availability of natural resources was certainly a factor in Michigan’s
development, as was the availability of transport systems, initially rivers
and inland lakes, to support their exploitation (Hart in Paddison, 2001).
Development has not been uniform, however, and the southern part of the
State, with its good connections to other parts of the United States remains
highly populated and industrial. Despite canal, rail, road and air
links, the north is still predominantly rural in nature and is viewed by
many as the wilderness. Yet, this may be the very factor that makes
the northern counties and the Upper Peninsula an attractive tourist and
retirement location. Within the broad North-South divide, there
are exceptions too. Not every town in the North is reliant on tourism
and there are southern cities far removed from the industry of Detroit.
It is within this context, that Cheboygan’s development and change is studied.
First Settlement:
Cheboygan was first settled by Europeans in the 1770s by Captain Samuel
Robertson and his wife (Olson & Turner, 1989). Their settlement
was seasonal and as with other parts of the region at the time, fur trading
was the principal purpose (Dunbar & May, ibid). The Cheboygan River
and system of inland lakes (See Appendix 1) provided both the natural habitat
for the Beavers and the means to transport their fur. The settlement’s
proximity to Mackinac Island, a large French fur trading post, and the Ottawa
and Chippewa tribes made the area an ideal location (Olson & Turner, 1989;
Dunbar & May, ibid).
Permanent Settlement:
The first permanent settlers in Cheboygan arrived between 1844-45 and were
attracted by the area’s lumbering potential (Olson & Turner, 1989).
Alexander McLeod, a resident of Mackinac Island, initially built a cabin
near the river at what is now Water Street (See Figure 9), but later constructed
a dam, water powered sawmill and settlement at the southern point of Duncan
Bay (Turner, 2000; See Figure 3). McLeod’s second settlement was to
become Duncan City, one of the “busiest towns on the Great Lakes” (Olson
& Turner, 1989: p3). Another settler, a barrel maker from Mackinac
Island called Jacob Sammons, built a shanty near where the State Street Bridge
now stands in 1844. Sammons later filed Cheboygan’s first Plat, containing
45 lots, in 1851 (Trahan, 1999; See Figure 10).
Cheboygan and the Lumber Industry:
Over the next four decades, both Cheboygan and Duncan City became
“paper towns” (Lingerman, ibid) with their principal industries related to
lumber and shipping (Olson & Turner, 1989). Although Duncan City
was larger and more important than Cheboygan, both places were “flourishing
lumbering Meccas” (Turner, 2000: p7; See Appendix 2) until the early 20th
Century. Sawmills were erected along the river and on the Lakeshore
to the west of Cheboygan.
The lumber boom and a growing population attracted fishing, manufacturing,
farming, livery, blacksmithing and flour milling to the area (Olson &
Turner, 1989). Duncan City boasted docks, a company store, shops and
houses, but no saloons, whilst Cheboygan boasted 42 of them (Turner, 2000).
However, Duncan City’s importance was lessened in 1856 when Cheboygan was
chosen as the county seat (Turner, 2000). In 1889, the year that Cheboygan
was incorporated as a city, it was the “centre for most all Northern Michigan
land and water transportation” (Olson & Turner, 1989: p3). It
was served by five steamboat lines, taking passengers to Mackinac Island,
St. Ignace and Sault Ste. Marie, three stagecoach lines and in 1881, the
Michigan Central Railroad. Cheboygan and Duncan City were connected
by a horse drawn streetcar running from Lincoln Avenue (Olson & Turner,
1989). Cheboygan’s links to the outside world were so important it
was known as ‘Hub City’ and advertised as the ‘gateway to the North’ (Olson
& Turner, 1989). The early years of the 20th Century saw a serious
decline in the Lower Peninsula’s lumber industry (Dunbar & May, ibid),
although it continued to be important to Cheboygan until 1928 when the Embury-Martin
Lumber Company burned down. The decline in the lumber industry and
similar fires had already reduced Duncan City to a ghost town by this time
and Cheboygan’s economy became dependent on “resort, agriculture, commerce
and industry” (Turner, 2000: p7).
Tourism and Diversification:
Until the 1950s, tourism proved to be Cheboygan’s main replacement for
the lumber industry (Olson & Turner, 1989). Papermaking was another
important employer in the City from the early part of the Century.
However, the plant changed hands and was closed several times until it was
bought by Proctor and Gamble in 1957. Cheboygan became the home of
‘Pampers’ in 1964 and by 1977, the plant was employing 500 people (Olson,
n.d.). The success of tourism and the move to industrial diversification
was aided by improved communications, both into the Cheboygan area and to
the Upper Peninsula. The opening of the Mackinac Bridge and Interstate
75 in the late 1950s brought an estimated 2 million cars into the region,
including 60,000 that would have previously used the Chicago/Wisconsin land
route (Trahan, 1999). Although Cheboygan continued to be served by
the railroad and received two trains per day, their viability was severely
reduced by the new highway (Turner, 2001; Dunbar & May, 1970).
By the 1960s, Jane Minsky, the then Chair of the Chamber of Commerce was
describing Cheboygan, with a population of 6000, as “one of the most progressive
and advantageously located cities in the upper part of the Lower Peninsula”
(See Appendix 3; Turner, 2000: p7) with tool manufacturing, tubing and steel
fabrication contributing to the local economy.
Cheboygan Today:
Today, the City has a population of 4000 people, with a total 26,448 living
within the County itself (Cheboygan Area Chamber of Commerce, 2001b; US
Census Bureau, 2001). Cheboygan continues to enjoy a diversified industrial
base, including gravel extraction, buffalo ranching and tubing. The
papermaking plant was closed down by Proctor and Gamble in 1991, but reopened
under new management in 1993. However, the plant’s closure, combined
with declining freight and passenger numbers has meant that the City is
no longer served by the railroad. Tourism is still an important element
in the local economy and the City boasts several high quality restaurants
and a thriving antique business (Cheboygan Area Chamber of Commerce, 2001b).
The arrival of Wal-Mart and the out-of-town Malls has changed the nature
of Main Street and the City is currently undertaking a $1.59 million ‘streetscape’
project to revitalize it (Chamber of Commerce, 2001b).
Conclusion:
The economic, demographic and environmental forces that combined
to shape Michigan have clearly influenced Cheboygan’s development.
However, Cheboygan did not dwindle at the end of the lumber boom with Duncan
City and other “paper towns” (Lingerman, 1980), and today enjoys a diversified
industrial base and status as a county seat and regional cultural centre.
The reasons for Cheboygan’s development from fur trading settlement, through
lumber boomtown, to modern day city are discussed in the following chapters.
![[Figure 4: Lakes & Rivers of Michigan. Dunbar & May, 1970: p5]](image1.jpg){kind=link}
![[Figure 5: French Forts, Missions and Portage Routes. Dunbar & May, 1970: p36-37]](image2.jpg){kind=link}
![[Figure 6: Canada and the American Mid-West, 1800. Meinig, 1993: p42]](image3.jpg){kind=link}
![[Figure 7: Michigan’s Railroads, 1900. Dunbar & May, 1970: p439]](image4.jpg){kind=link}
![[Figure 9: Site of First Permanent Settlements. After Olson & Turner, 1989 and Historical Society of Cheboygan County, 1996]](image6.jpg){kind=link}
![[Figure 10: First Plat of Cheboygan, 1851. Cited in Trahan, 1999: p13]](image7.jpg){kind=link}