In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

6 State Forest GERALD F. MYERS Jerry Myers joined the Michigan Department of Conservation in 1940, renamed the Department of Natural Resources in 1968. Jerry worked at state ‹sh hatcheries in Harrisville and Bay City. After military service in 1942–45, he worked with the Institute for Fisheries Research in Ann Arbor, then moved in 1949 to the Pigeon River Trout Research Station. He lived at headquarters until his retirement in 1975, then managed a private lodge in Crawford County for ‹ve years. Michigan established its ‹rst state forest in 1903. It had thousands of acres of cutover, burned-over stump lands in the north it didn’t know what to do with. So it set aside 34,000 acres in the vicinity of Houghton and Higgins lakes and called them a state “forest”—lands that more closely resembled a blackened, barren desert. That was the beginning of the Houghton Lake and Higgins Lake State Forests and likewise the beginning of the state forest system. Other forests were organized in this order: 1913, Fife Lake and Lake Superior; 1914, Ogemaw; 1915, Presque Isle; 1916, Alpena; 1919, Pigeon River; 1925, Hardwood; 1927, Black Lake; 1928, Mackinac and Au Sable; 1940, Allegan. Between 1930 and 1940, most state forest land was acquired through tax abandonment. Pigeon River State Forest by 1940 reached 89,624 acres covering parts of several counties, including Otsego, Charlevoix, Cheboygan , Presque Isle, and Montmorency. State lands in northern lower Michigan were leased in 1968 for hydrocarbon exploration and development. The Michigan DNR, in an effort to protect the unique central area, reduced the boundary in 1973. The boundaries grew to 93,000 acres with 70 the addition of the Green Timbers property in 1982 [and to 105,048 acres with the addition of the Blue Lakes Ranch in 1990, as well as other parcels, all purchased with revenues from oil and gas development]. The ‹rst headquarters was built in 1919 one mile downstream from the present headquarters, where a clearing now exists near the south end of Osmun Road. The house and building were frame, farmhouse-style, the standard type used at several state forest headquarters. The house was two stories with a dormer on the roof. Four bedrooms and a bath upstairs, wood cookstove, with running water from the creek—as long as there was plenty of water in the creek. Sometimes it went dry in the summer. There was a barn, garage, bunkhouse, a team of horses (no tractors), and a hay ‹eld across from the present headquarters. The hay ‹eld is now grown up into brush. The ‹ve log buildings [on a site a mile upstream in the early 1980s] were constructed by laborers from the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) during the early 1930s. There were two CCC camps, one at the corner of Clark Bridge Road and Osmun Road and the other at Pickerel Lake. The Civilian Conservation Corps was a Depression era program created to employ World War I veterans and young men from cities, villages, and farms. It was run like a military camp. The CCC began in Michigan at Higgins Lake on May 22, 1933. By its end in early October 1941, more than 500 bridges were built in the state, 221 buildings erected, 33 airplane landing strips constructed, 5,600 miles of road laid, some 140,000 man-days spent ‹ghting ‹res, and 134,000 acres of trees planted in Michigan. The only evidence of where they stayed in Pigeon River Country is a band of sidewalks in the ‹eld approaching Inspiration Point on the west side of Osmun Road in the northern forest. This new headquarters [along the Pigeon] was built to house the state’s ‹rst conservation school, which was moved in the 1940s to Higgins Lake. The buildings were constructed from large pine logs salvaged from a ‹re in Crawford County. Foundations are concrete, 18 inches thick. Stonework above ground level was cut by CCC labor. Log construction was supervised by an experienced log cabin builder. He trained several ‹ve-man CCC crews who would lay up a log, scribe the lower edge to the log below, take it down and hand hew the edge to ‹t the lower log. Oakum (creosote hemp ‹ber) was used in joints and a mortar mix on the outside of log joints. Window frames were prepared and glass cut for each pane. Several windows were laid out on a bench before the glazing expert would complete the window. Those who remember...

Share