Book Description

From Book's Jacket flap: The Northern half of Lower Michigan remained in splendid isolation until after the Civil War. To be sure, some settlements and commercial activity antedated the 1860's, especially along the shores of Lakes Michigan and Huron, but the interior regions were carpeted with forests, and devoid of organized settlements. The history of this region, therefore, is necessarily concerned with the removal of this tremendous forest and the founding of organized civil governments and towns. The timber harvesters were rowdy crowd for the most part, but they brought day-light to the swamps. They tolerated county and municipal governments as little as possible, seeking to control them for their own benefits. Land hungry immigrants, refugees from Europe, Canada, and the eastern United States, and from the Civil War were scattered throughout the timbered over districts in their settler's cabins. During the last third of the nineteenth century, mid-Michigan became a battleground between the lumbermen and the settlers. Because the lumbermen were more strident and less inhibited than the God-fearing settlers, they seemed, at first, to win the struggle, but the settlers had staying power. They had come to build homes for their families, so the losses were accepted temporarily, but they were not content to let the coarser elements win the final battles. When the timber people finished leveling the forests, they lost interest in the so-called waste lands of the interior and let much of it return to the state for back taxes. Some land was sold, but most of it was abandoned. The lumber barons also abandoned the scores of saloons and bawdy houses, the lumber camps and their seasonal jobs. Left in their wake were the scattered ghost towns, farm communities and villages and towns, greatly weakened by the sudden loss of people and commerce.