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Powers left his name on a neighboring townJean WorthDaily Press columnistWhen I wrote a little historic sketch -on Spalding I noted that I d write another about its twin village of Powers. They’re always referred to as Powers-Spalding, not as Spalding-Powers for some reason that I don’t know about. Best guess is probably because Powers dates back a little farther than Spalding, but not much. “P” comes before “S” in the alphabet and a philologist might suggest that this could have been an influence.Spalding was created because of the Big Cedar River which flows through it and it was named for Jesse Spalding, who owned the sawmill at the town of Cedar River at its mouth on Green Bay and who owned a lot of timberlands in the valley of the river. This large ownership comprising over100,000 acres is the reason why Spalding Township is the top of Menominee County was named for Old Jesse. He often visited his satrapy at Cedar River and owned the New York Farm near Iron Mountain and who started a bank there. The farm was named for the New York Lumber Company, which built the first steam sawmill on the Menominee River at Menekaune (East Marinetti) in 1856. It failed and Spalding and some other lumbermen bought it and made it a big success as the Menominee River lumber Company.It was the custom of the big Menominee and Marinette sawmill firms which had their logs delivered by the Menominee River Boom Company to acquire large farms on the river on which they summered the horses which they used in their winter logging operations and on which they raised potatoes, cabbage, rutabagas and other logging camp food and also feed for their horses, mules and oxen.Spalding was an inner and outer in mill ownership on the Cedar. Hack-bone Boyden built the first water mill near the mouth in 1854 and sold to Samuel Hamilton and Sylvester Lynn, who built a steam sawmill at the mouth Spalding and a partner, Robert Law, bought the mill in 1862. Lemoyne, Hubbard Wood had acquired the mill by 1876 when they failed and it reverted to Spalding.It was in this interim ownership period that the hamlet of Spalding was created and called “Big Cedar’’ when Lemoyne, Hubbard and Wood built a small sawmill there. Although there had been logging and log driving on the Cedar from 1854, there could not be a sawmill on it except at its mouth on Green Bay because there was no way to get the lumber to market. In 1872 the Chicago North Western Railway built its line north from Menominee to Escanaba (which had had an ore haul railroad from Negaunee since 1865) and this line turned east for the run to Little Bay de Noc at Spalding, 41 miles north of Menominee. The first designation of the village was (Milepost) “Post 41” or just “41.” (Some accounts make it42.”)When Jesse Spalding got back the property of Lemoyne, Hubbard andWood in 1876 it included the sawmill on the Cedar which they had built at Spalding and he operated the mill and marketed its lumber over the new railroad. In 1898, with the pine gone, Spalding sold his Spalding Lumber Company to Samuel Crawford and Sons of Pigeon, Pennsylvania and they took over the Cedar River sawmill and 50,000 acres of Spalding timberlands on the Cedar River south of what s now US-2. The timberlands to the north went to Ross Brothers of Manistique, who ran the mill for a time and failed and those lands went to the U.S. Steel Company, which had mineral land holdings to the west on the Menominee Iron Range. U.S. Steel sold these lands and others, totaling94,000 acres, in 1981 to the Mead Publishing Paper Division of Escanaba, which has incorporated them into its big Upper Peninsula forest, which, with optioned lands, now comprises 674,000 acres.To go back to “41. When the North Western turned east to Escanaba at Spalding it was to serve an established community and business needs. But the Breen Mine at Waucedah on the Menominee Iron Range was being developed and the range's potential for iron production was known. The North Westernwanted to serve this emerging industry and it started construction of its Menominee River Railroad with right-of-way acquisition (it owned a lot of it through the land grants it got for building its railroad), clearing and a bit of grading in 1872-73, but this work was stopped by financial difficulties in a money panic and the rails were not extended to Quinnesecuntil 1877. (In passing they madepossible the creation of Hermansville, founded in 1878, Cunard, Waucedah and other hamlets.)Edward Powers was a civil engineer employed by the North Western who surveyed its route from Menominee north to Powers, which was named for him and which he platted as a village. He was a Civil War veteran and his brother-in-law, Samuel Bassett, was Iron Mountain’s last veteran of that war. Powers died about 1934. He had acquired lands in the vicinity of Powers starting in 1872 and the hamlet boomed with development of iron mining on the Menominee Range, most notably with the discovery in 1873 of the Quinnesec Mine by John L. Buell, publisher of the Menominee Journal, later moved to Stephenson. Eld Powers was for many years associated with the develoDment of his village.Carrie Brooks became its first postmaster in 1877 and it was incorporated as a village in 1915 after an earlier effort in 1903 failed. My personal memories of Powers include Jake Fontanna’s hotel, a big, boxy wood structure beside the railroad track at the junction, supported largely by the rail traffic. I was with my family there as a little boy when I was served a glass of water with a small chicken feather floating in it. Jake Fontanna’s son, Stanley, became a distinguished dean of natural resources at the University flf Michigan.Charlie Quade, publisher of the Powers-Spalding Tribune, is memorable and especially so is the building of Pinecrest Tuberculosis Sanatarium by Delta, Menominee and Dickinson counties under the great leadership of the late Dr. John W. Towey. When he came to fight tuberculosis in the 1920s he did it in clinics in libraries and town halls add then built the big san and, with the great aid of new drug therapies, conquered TB. It was one of our greatest medical achievements, and specially impressive, I think, becapse of local government’s role in it. Pinecrest continues its usefulness as a
Newspaper Details
Escanaba Daily Press
Escanaba, Michigan, US
Mon, Jan 18, 1982
Page 4
Full Page
Clipped by
Jean H.
IL, USA 20 Apr 2019
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