It seems like every state in America sort of has that one thing it is known for. There are even sometimes cases where a state will have a couple things it is known for. Those particular things can even change over the years. Michigan (where I live) is a perfect example of that. While the state is most currently attributed to the auto industry, it also has a rich history of being a major hub in the fur trade, copper mining, and as the title of this post implies, logging.
I mentioned in this post last week that I would be talking about the logging museum in a future post. Well, here we are.
We walked to the logging museum from the day use area of Hartwick Pines State Park, but there is a separate parking lot for the museum if you want to just visit that. As you can see from the photos above, they have a variety of equipment on display that was used back in the day for the logging business.
I'm going to count on Google and Gemini to give you a bit of history on the industry in Michigan, but the photos are all mine. The logging boom in Michigan really started thanks to the French and British visitors who used the abundant white pine timber for forts, ships, and other structures.
In the 1830's the commercial logging era began with our beloved white pine (state tree of Michigan) being used across the country for just about everything. In fact, from 1869 to 1900 Michigan was the leading lumber producer in the US.
Along with the outdoor equipment I already showed, the museum also consists of several buildings that help show what life may have been like in a typical logging camp back then. It looks a bit cramped to me, but they weren't too concerned about luxury back then, just getting the trees down and sent along the river.
The abundance of inland waterways in the state that also lead to the Great Lakes made it fairly easy for loggers to transport the timber to a place where it could be shipped across the country. One of the key areas was the Saginaw Valley which would be considered the general area where I live and grew up. It's hard to imagine what the area must have looked like when it was covered with majestic white pines.
It's a bit sad in a way.
As you might imagine, there wasn't much foresight back then and it wasn't until the early 1900's that people started to realize we needed to conserve some of these areas from the logging industry.
This is actually a good information site if you want to find out more
The museum itself has a ton of information along with cool artifacts and exhibits like the ones you see above. There are actually museums like this all across the state for different industries or pieces of our history. I think the Michigan park system does a really good job of preserving that sort of stuff and putting it on display for visitors.
In the final building we visited, they had this scale model of what a typical logging camp may have looked like back in the day. It's actually impressive the number of photos they also have. I am always shocked at how long the camera has been around.
I was talking to @silversaver888 the other day about how many of the small towns in the middle of Michigan have these random massive mansions in the older part of the town. It's pretty clear now given the prominence of the timber trade in the "middle of the mitten" that many of those houses were likely built by and for lumber barons or higher ranking members of the business.
The logging industry is still sort of active in the state of Michigan. It isn't uncommon to be traveling through one of the more wooded areas and see flatbed trucks loaded with logs or sections of the forest that have been clear-cut. Thankfully, they are a bit more cautious about where and what they cut. In fact, I was driving across the state with @mrsbozz earlier this summer and I noticed some areas where they had recently cut away the lumber.
If you looked really closely, you could see rows upon rows of small white pine trees that had been planted in place of the ones they cut down. Perhaps in a couple hundred years these areas will be as majestic as they once were.
Then the cycle will repeat itself (assuming we are still using wood!).
The Hartwick Pines Logging Museum was a great way to spend our Saturday morning. If you ever get the chance to check it out, I highly encourage it. It's a beautiful setting and highly informational. I couldn't possibly cover it all in this short post!
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All pictures/screenshots taken by myself or @mrsbozz unless otherwise sourced