Friends, Families & Forays: Scenes from the Life and Times of Henry Ford

54. Huron Mountain Club

54 Huron Mountain Club People living in Dearborn sixty to seventy years ago read in the newspapers each summer of the annual trip of Henry and Clara Ford to their summer home in the Huron Mountains. Their “cabin” at the Huron Mountain Club was approximately forty miles north of Marquette, Michigan, several miles beyond the small town of Big Bay. The region in which the Huron Mountain Club was situated comprised a group of granitic mountains, rugged but not lofty, interspersed with lakes and streams. Over nearly all of the club area stood the primeval forest. Some of the slopes and crests were bare, but in the main the land was heavily timbered with hardwoods and hemlocks. Good stands of pine, maple, cedar, basswood, and birch joined in the array. The Huron Mountain Shooting and Fishing Club was organized in 1889 by twelve charter members headed by Horatio Seymour, Jr., of Marquette. Several wealthy Detroiters, including the lumber baron Truman H. Newberry, were among these charter members. According to a report of the club’s Conservation Committee, “The Huron Mountain Club was originally founded and has since been maintained by a group of men and women of different interests and occupations who have found a common bond in the few months of every year spent at the Club. This bond is their love of the still unspoiled natural beauty of the place.” The originally issued soliciting circular described the club as having 9,000 acres, including six lakes in the heart of the Huron Mountains, with the proposal of making the region a hunting and fishing park. A clubhouse was to be built and lakes and streams stocked with fish. It was to be a stock corporation with shares of stock at $100 and a maximum of five shares per individual. At the time the club was formed in 1889, steamboat transportation was provided twice a week between Marquette and Houghton with stops along Lake Superior including Big Bay. A $2,313 clubhouse was built in 1893 on Pine River. The charge for board and room at the club414 Previously published in the Dearborn Historian, Vol. 32, No. 3, 1992. house was a dollar a day per person.The club had no license to sell alcoholic drinks in the early years, but members could provide their own. There was to be no shooting during the summer months, but in the fall, deer, grouse, ducks, geese, and bear were fair game. The killing of loons, hedgehogs, chipmunks, and such “small but picturesque and harmless game” was discouraged. The “plucking of rare flowers, the uprooting of ferns and the needless mutilation of trees and shrubs” were frowned upon. Without charge, rowboats were made available on Pine, Trout, Rush, and Ives Lakes, with guides available, if desired, for two dollars a day. Powerboats were not permitted on the inland lakes, and auto roads were not opened into the forests. 415 The Ford cabin at the Huron Mountain Club north of Marquette in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. This was Clara’s favorite summer resort. Dozens of photographs show her feeding the deer that roamed the woods and came to the door for some tasty morsel. Clara’s personal maid, Rosa Buhler, is said to have greatly enjoyed taking an early-morning swim in the frigid waters of Lake Superior each morning. Henry seems not to have especially relished living in such solitude in the woods, and neither Henry nor Clara participated a great deal in social events at the club. (0.2847) In 1901, scheduled steamboat transportation was discontinued because it was losing money, and the sand road from Marquette to Big Bay required two days to negotiate by horse and carriage. But in 1906, a railroad was built to Big Bay, and the club was revived. In 1914, a post office was established, and by 1917, automobiles and a better road became the method of getting from Marquette to the club. By the 1920s, fifty families had built cabins in the woods and along rivers and lakes. Until that time, conditions had been quite primitive. No telephone service was provided to the cabins, each cabin had its pump, each fireplace its crane and kettle, and a portable tub was an item of everyday equipment. In the early 1920s, Henry Ford had purchased a good portion of the timber of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan including a large portion of Baraga County...