USA > Michigan > Bay County > History of Bay County, Michigan, and representative citizens > Part 21
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John Hayes, then superintended the only scow available for moving horses, cattle and wagons across the river, and his good wife dealt out beverages to thirsty travelers at their home on the west bank of the river. Mrs. Hayes was a typical tavern-keeper of those early days. Dan Marshall, the pioneer and present city accountant, recounts gleefully how Mrs. Hayes would personally and drastically chastise travelers who were poor pay, "ruling the roost" with an iron hand. This lone tavern did a booming business during 1864-65 when Wenona was just coming to life, and then had to give way before more modern and preten- tious hotels.
The west bank of the river was more swampy and low than the east bank, and this probably accounts for the earlier settlement of the less attractive east shore, back from the river. This was due to the gradual change of the course of the river, which did its best, year after year, to straighten out its tortuous course.
Hence the Sage mill was built almost entirely on spiles driven into the murky river bottom, and the great lumberyard was laid out on a swamp that was entirely filled in with refuse from the mill and city. In 1905 it is no uncom- mon sight to see poor people going over the surface, picking up the chips and slabs dried by the passing years, yet never rotted.
Few communities in this country have grown more rapidly than did the village of Wenona, started in 1864. By 1865 the county began the building of the plank road west to Midland, while the State extended the State road on the west bank from Saginaw to Wen- ona, and opened a road north through the gov- ernment's swamp lands, since drained and cul- tivated. The Third street bridge was built in 1865, for foot passengers. A post office and telegraph office were established in Wenona, and the Presbyterian Church built. The Sage store and other business places sprang up over night, and the population multiplied rapidly.
Wenona was incorporated in 1867. An old painting of this frontier village shows Indians in gaudy paint and picturesque wigwams in the foreground, and all the bustle and enterprise of a booming lumber town in the background. The steamer "Emerald" and schooner "Tuscola" are loading lumber and other supplies at a primitive dock. The same kind of a scene would suffice to call to mind Salzburg, the village two miles further down the river. Wenona records for 1867 the cutting of a canal from the west chan- nel through the Middle Ground to the river, which west channel has since been entirely filled in, save for the wharves between the lumber docks with their deep-water channels. A shingle-mill, salt-block and sawmill for cutting ship timber were erected that year on the Sage property.
Dr. Isaac E. Randall came from Saratoga, New York, the first medical practitioner of the
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West Side, who in 1905 is one of the foremost physicians of Michigan, beloved and respected by the community in which he has practiced for more than half a century. With George A. Allen, James A. McKnight, E. T. Carrington, David G. Arnold, Lafayette Roundsville, H. H. Aplin and a few others, he shares the honor of being one of the incorporators of Wenona, later West Bay City, and living to see the one great and united city become chartered in April, 1905. To few mortals it is given to celebrate such an anniversary.
The world-famous Sage mill cut 22,601,- 051 feet of lumber during 1867, and commem- orated the close of the season's work with a banquet for the hundreds of employees at the Bunnell House. Among the improvements by the Sage company in 1868 was the erection of a two-story business block, 30 by 80 feet ; a ware- house, 24 by 60 feet; a two-story boarding house, 30 by 80 feet ; a two-story brick office, 20 by 60 feet; a tenement house, 400 by 24 feet, two stories high, divided into 25 suites, each with its own back yard and wood-shed; and 23 houses of various sizes for the use of the employees. It was estimated the company had invested over one million dollars in the vil- lage within three years after its operations were begun in Wenona.
The main event of 1868 was the completion of the passenger station for the Michigan Cen- tral Railroad, to-day the road's freight station on River street. It is 200 by 40 feet, roofed with slate, was built by George Campbell and cost $10,500. Slate roofing was quite popular at that time, chiefly because of the fires which periodically swept over these lumbering towns.
The first train schedule is interesting read- ing in 1905. In 1868 trains for Jackson and Chicago left at 9 A. M. and 2:40 P. M., with an accommodation train at 8 P. M. for Sag- inaw. Trains arrived at 8:30 A. M., and 1 :50
and 7 P. M. These were booming times on the West Side !
Faxon's Hall, was the only public meeting place, and the Methodists held service there. A new brick school, 60 by 30 feet, with wings 10 by 30 feet, all two stories high, accommodating 360 scholars, was built on the Midland plank road at a cost of $10,700. Supt. A. L. Cum- ming opened the school January 27th with 180 scholars. Miss Stocking taught the interme- diate department, and Miss Lester, the primary class. The Irwin House at the bridge approach, and the Bunnell House, just completed, were the town taverns. The planing mill of D. G. Arnold & Company, two stories high, 44 by 82 feet in dimensions, was the second large in- dustry in Wenona, beginning operations in 1865. By 1868 the village claimed nearly 1,000 inhabitants and built over 1,000 feet of side- walks. There were no vacant houses and lots 50 by 100 feet, on Midland street, sold for from $150 to $2,000. New industries rallied around Wenona, bringing more people, and new busi- ness houses.
While the last of the three villages to begin life on the West Side, Wenona soon surpassed its suburban villages and in 1877 absorbed Banks and Salzburg, and became the sister city of West Bay City, and in April of this year of grace, 1905, becomes Bay City, West Side.
In 1865 when Bay City began its municipal existence as a city, the hamlet of Salzburg oc- cupied a prominent place on the landscape to the southwest. That elevated and wooded loca- tion was a favorite spot for the Indian camp- fires, and the first white settler was Benjamin Cushway, sent here by the government as black- smith for the natives. Finding nothing doing in the agricultural line, he turned trader and inter- preter, and for years did a thriving business among the red men and early pioneers. In
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1842, Capt. Solomon S. Stone and wife came by canoe from Detroit, and settled in a wig- wam on the deserted Indian field just west of the approach to the present Lafayette avenue bridge. For three years he tilled this field, with much better success than the Indians, and by catching and selling muskrat and beaver skins accumulated enough money to buy Stone Isl- and, where he lived until his death in 1883.
Dr. Daniel Hughes Fitzhugh in 1837 se- lected the site of Salzburg as a very promising location for future settlement, and bought large tracts of land along the river front. His judg- ment was soon verified, and by 1865 the hamlet was alive with industries. In 1862, Dr. Fitz- hugh platted part of his land from the Lafayette avenue bridge north to the section line, and since the main industry was the manufacture of salt at that time, he named the village Salz- burg, in honor of the many German settlers, and after the great salt-mine city in Austria. Dr. Fitzhugh built the first salt-block in 1862, while similar industries were located by the Hu- ron Company, Johnson & Walsh and Hill & Son. Laderach Brothers started their hoop and stave mill in 1861. Stone's mill was built in 1865, and in 1866 cut 2,500,000 feet of lum- ber. Jacob Laderach and M. A. and A. H. Root operated shingle-mills. M. A. Root is still an honored resident of the East Side. John Arnold & Company, and the Huron Company operated sawmills.
In 1868 the property of the Huron Com- pany was secured by John W. Babcock, one of the most interesting figures in our pioneer an- nals. Born in New York in 1831, his family came to Washtenaw, Michigan, in 1835. In 1851 he determined to try his fortune in the wilderness, and with nothing but a compass for his guide started for Bay City. He camped out alone in the dense forest three nights out of five; the other two were spent with settlers in
lone cabins he chanced to pass. He camped one night with Indians upon the site of future Salz- burg, and concluded that it was a good place to live. But for the time being there was noth- ing there for him to do. He helped to clear a number of farms in that vicinity, for the late James Fraser, and assisted in clearing the way for Center avenue. He took the contract for building a portion of the Tuscola plank road in 1858, built the Bay City, AuSable and Dun- can State road, 155 miles, 1861-65 and drove the first team from the north to Bay City. The larger portion of his pay consisted of 72,000 acres of government land, of which he held a portion and sold the scrip for the remainder. In 1867 he built the military wagon road from Fort Howard in Wisconsin to Fort Wilkins, in the Upper Peninsula, over 178 miles, receiv- ing three sections of land per mile, a total of 348,060 acres. During all this time his home was in Salzburg. In 1868 he determined to purchase the sawmill, salt-block, boarding house and tenement houses of the Huron Com- pany, valued at over $100,000. He gave 33,- 600 acres of his Wisconsin government land for this fine property, and traded the remainder for improved farm and other property. Al- though the hard work of this pioneer in the wilderness allowed him but little time for school, he was typical of that sterling race of self-made business men, equal to every emer- gency, and rising to every occasion. Where to- day young men rely on a college education for a guide through life, these rugged settlers could rely only on their own resources, energy and diligence.
By 1868 there were more additions to the kettle salt-blocks of Salzburg; Charles C. Fitz- hugh, Tallman & Parmalee, Fisk & Clark and the Chicago Company were added to the ham- let's enterprises. The post office was estab- lished in 1868, stores multiplied, and George
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Kolb, Sr., who came here in 1854, opened the first brewery, which since has grown to large proportions.
In 1875 Wenona made an unsuccessful at- tempt to extend her boundaries so as to include Salzburg, but not until 1877 did the hamlet be- come part of the new city of West Bay City. To this day the region lying south of the section line, including all of the 16th Ward of Greater Bay City, is popularly known and marked on railroad maps as "Salzburg." Frederick Neu- man, for more than 24 years justice of the peace of the West Side, was born in Salzburg in 1857, and is one of the few living residents who have seen this thriving suburb grow from a few salt-wells and farms to its present pros- perous and populous condition.
Thus we find the West Side finally united. Banks has expanded to the south, Salzburg has reached out to the north, and Wenona has reached out in both directions, until the homes and lives of the three villages have become so interwoven that there was really no longer any dividing line and the Legislature of 1877 made one community on the west bank of the river.
The same forces were at work during all these years on the East Side, and by 1873 there was really no longer a dividing line between Bay City and Portsmouth, and by act of the Legislature the village of Portsmouth, now the Sixth and Seventh wards of Bay City, ceased its corporate existence, and became an integral part of the busy city, then extending almost from the mouth of the river for five miles south along the river bank.
The extension of the Michigan Central Railroad, due north from Bay City to the Straits of Mackinac, opened new fields of trade and commerce, and made the two Bay Cities a most important railroad center. As early as 1880 the Chamber of Commerce made an ef- fort to bring the mineral wealth of the Upper
Peninsula to Bay City, for the forge and smel- ter. Had the copper and iron interests known the unlimited coal supply lying only 150 feet below the surface, there is no doubt but that the natural advantages for these great indus- tries would have been complete, and that Bay City would have become the "Pittsburg of the Northwest." But strangely enough all the bor- ing for salt-wells went obliviously through these veins of coal, and no one took the trouble to bore especially for coal, and hence the ore from the Upper Peninsula passed down Lake Huron, past its natural harbor on Saginaw Bay, to Ohio and Pennsylvania ports, where coal was plenty. Bay City was too busy sawing lumber and making salt, to bother about other and more permanent industries. How many times since then, the older business men have regretted the opportunities thus missed. How much better it would have been for Bay City, East and West Side, if some of the lumber here produced: had been turned into the manu- factured article, thus giving us the varied in- terests, which later were so sadly missed. Even so the Bay Cities were just cresting the tidal wave of the lumber boom when these first con- solidations gave them rank with the good cities of the State and country.
West Bay City's business center was on Midland and Linn streets, the Sage, Babo, Ap- lin, Allard, Campbell, Moots and Bank blocks giving the young city a substantial trade mark. South of the Sage mill were the railroad docks, then came the large shipyard owned and oper- ated, then as now, by Capt. James Davidson. North of the Sage mill was the Ballentine ship- yard, the gypsum factory of Smith, Bullard & Company (whose gypsum supply came from Alabaster, Michigan), and the Litchfield saw- mill.
A little idea of the increasing importance of the West Side as a business center may be
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gained by two leaves from the West Side post office receipts. When Henry H. Alpin became postmaster of Wenona in 1869, there were 38 mail boxes ; by 1883 there were 1,089, and the annual receipts had increased from $800 to nearly $9,000.
Churches and schools multiplied rapidly to meet the constantly increasing demand, and the flimsy buildings of the frontier settlement were gradually replaced by more substantial and im- posing structures.
Chief among the new buildings of 1883 was the Sage Library, built and equipped by Henry W. Sage, who made much of his im- mense fortune in the "Big Mill" on the West Side. Aside from a few public parks, this is the only large public benefaction ever left either of the Bay Cities, and cost something like $50.000. Many fortunes were made here, but this library alone remains to show, that at least one of the rich lumbermen cared something for posterity, and desired to be honored and re- membered amid the scenes of his business suc- cess and life's work. This lack of public spirit on the part of the men and families who ac- cumulated millions of dollars, when they sheared the valley of its timber supply, has for years been keenly felt and deplored by these communities. Would that the Bay Cities had found among their pioneer lumbermen more public spirit and more loyalty to the towns! Would that among that long list of millionaire lumbermen whose fortunes were made through the superior advantages of the Bay Cities, there had been at least one more Henry W. Sage.
After the consolidation of the West Side villages in 1877, things moved swiftly for the public good. In 1882 the Holly water-works plant was begun, and operated until 1902, when the new and modern pumping station was erect- ed on the beautiful and historic shores of the Kawkawlin, with the intake pipe extending
well into the clear water of the bay off Tobico. By that fine engineering feat the West Side has solved its own water supply problem for many years to come, and the East Side may now profit by the foresight and good judgment of the West Side. That new station is planned to supply a population of 75,000.
In 1869 the fire steamer "Defiance" was pur- chased, with S. A. Plummer as chief, and a company of volunteers. This proved unsatis- factory, so a paid department was organized, and after the union of the three villages each ward was given one hose company, the three, with the steamer, comprising the department over there until 1905. John Charters was the first city fire chief, and Lafayette Roundsville, the first engineer.
West Bay City had 3,000 people in 1877, and by 1883 had increased to over 8,000. The Federal census of 1890 showed a population of 12,981, and that of 1900 marked a slight in- crease, despite the fact that the West Side suf- fered, along with the entire valley, from the closing down of many sawmills, by giving the West Side 13,119 people. The new city laid many miles of cedar block pavement, estab- lished an electric light plant, began an excel- lent sewer system, and laid thousands of feet of sidewalks. The long stretch of river front makes the building of roads and sidewalks an expensive detail of municipal affairs, for there is still much vacant property within the wide reaches of the corporate limits. The heavy bonded indebtedness of the West Side in 1904 is largely due to this fact, and it nearly caused the defeat of consolidation, for the East Side is better situated in this respect and hence has less indebtedness.
By the union of Portsmouth in 1873, the East Side became one solid and substantial city. In 1865 when the city was first organized, the limits were the Saginaw River on the west and
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north, Madison avenue on the east and Colum- bus avenue on the south. By 1873 these limits had expanded to reach from Cass avenue on the south to Essexville on the north, and from the river to Trumbull street on the east.
The bulk of the business was still being done along Water street on the river front, but in the last 10 years a gradual change has come over the city. Center and Washington avenues are becoming the most popular locations for the retail trade, while Water street is becoming the wholesale and distributing center of Greater Bay City. No street in the country is better situated for manufacturing institutions or warehouses than Water street. Just 300 feet west is the deep-water channel of the river, which in the wholesale district is lined with warehouses and docks.
In 1864 the Bay City Council had granted a street car franchise to a syndicate of Milan, Ohio, capitalists. In February, 1865, the first board of directors of the Bay City & Ports- mouth Street Railway Company was elected as follows: James Fraser, Nathan B. Bradley, William McEwan, Myron Butman and George Campbell. During 1865 William McEwan superintended the construction of the track along Water street from Third to 35th street, on which horse cars began running in Novem- ber, 1865. In 1874 a new syndicate took over the street car system and extended the track to McGraw's mammoth mill on the south and to Essexville on the north. A light T-rail was laid, over which railroad cars could be moved, and the foundation laid for the splendid belt line system which now circles down the river front and around the entire city a belt of steel that provides fine factory sites, ready means of transportation, and an easy interchange of traf- fic and cars between the several roads entering Bay City. At first the street cars used these
tracks in the daytime, while the switching was done by the railroads at night.
When electricity replaced the horses, the lines of track were much changed. From the "Y" at Essexville the trolley line follows Woodside avenue to Sherman, to First, to Washington, to Columbus, to Garfield, to La- fayette, to Cass, to Harrison, a distance of five miles, and touching from north to south the principal business streets. A loop is made around the business district, on Water from Third to Center, to Washington, to Third, and west across the Third street bridge to the heart of the West Side. The Center avenue line ex- tends from Water east to the city limits, where another "Y" furnishes an easy mode of using the double tracks, which are laid on Center and Washington avenues on the East Side, and on Midland and Henry, on the West Side. An- other branch line extends on Columbus avenue from Garfield to the Tuscola stone road. The West Side lines run from Midland south, down Center street to the State road in Salzburg, north on Henry to South Union, to Washing- ton, to Banks, and Wenona Beach, six miles from the Court House. The street car service is excellent, the equipment is modern and well- handled in every respect, and really years in ad- vance of other features of municipal conven- ience. The interurban electric line to Saginaw and Detroit enters the city over a fine bridge south of the North American Chemical Com- pany's plant, and carries freight as well as pas- sengers. An immense power house was erected in 1903 on Water street near 10th streets, which will meet all electric power requirements for years to come for both lines.
When the street car system gave up the Water street tracks, they were used exclusively for handling freight, and a number of the saw- mills on that belt line depend entirely upon
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their log supply by rail. This is due to the fact, that the logging camps are now so far in the interior, that it is cheaper to build branch rail- roads into the heart of the hardwood timber belt to the north, than to transport the logs to rivers to be rafted down to Lake Huron and thence to the Saginaw River. Hence the railroad traf- fic has increased annually, while the river traffic has fallen off.
This belt line passed the big McGraw mill at the foot of 40th street, then the largest mill in the world! The official chronicler of the centennial year, 1876, tells us that the mill had cut more than 800,000 feet of lumber in a single day, and that the average cut per day was worth $11,000 at the prevailing prices of lum- ber, and the big Sage mill on the West Side, with recent additions, was then but little behind this record. By 1876 the local log supply had been exhausted, and logs were being rafted from the Tittabawassee and Cass rivers to the south, and from the streams on Saginaw Bay to the north.
The city was well supplied with boiler and machine shops to supply the needs of the busy mills. The East Side then had 77 manufactur- ing establishments, employing nearly $5,000,- 000 in capital, while the rest of the county had 35 other manufacturing plants, with a capital of nearly $2,000,000. On the East Side were 28 sawmills, with 34 circular and 21 gang saws. The lumber manufactured in 1876 was worth over $4,000,000, while the lath and shingle shipments were worth over $150,000. Then there were 27 salt-wells, producing an- nually about 400,000 barrels of salt, at $1.40 per barrel; 27 planing-mills ; three wood-work- ing establishments; the Michigan Pipe Com- pany's plant ; the Bay City woodenware works, which has since expanded, and is in 1905 the largest and best equipped in the world; five machine shops, including the Industrial Works,
which has steadily grown to its present size; and two grist-mills.
The chronicler with the eyes of a seer pre- dicted the building of a railroad north, skirting Lake Huron, since verified by the completion of the Detroit & Mackinac Railroad as far as Cheboygan in 1904, and still reaching north. His prediction of a road east to the "Thumb" of Michigan is to be verified in 1905 by the building of the Bay City & Port Huron Rail- way, via Caro and Cass City.
The farms adjacent to Bay City were stead- ily increasing in numbers and resources, al- though the agricultural interests of our subur- ban townships were still in their infancy 30 years ago.
The business blocks and public buildings in 1876 were far and away ahead of those of other and less progressive cities of the country. The four-story Westover Opera House Block then contained the State Bank, Bancroft & Company's dry goods store and many offices. The theater was pronounced at that time one of the most commodious and modern in Michigan. Fire wiped it out some years later, and a larger and handsomer office building, the Phoenix Block, has risen from the ashes. The old opera house was replaced by a new theater, on Sixth street and Washington avenue. In 1903 the in- terior of Wood's Opera House was gutted, in one of the fiercest conflagrations that ever vis- ited this city. Eugene Zaremba was killed by falling brick. Within a few months this loss was straightened out with the insurance com- panies, and the Washington Theater has arisen in its place, more beautiful and artistic than be- fore.
The Arlington on the West Side, the mas- sive four-story Fraser, the three-story Forest City, the Campbell, the three-story Astor and the three-story Rouech on the East Side were then, as now, popular and up-to-date hotels,
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