Menominee County Courthouse and Jail
Dear George,
Every few
weeks I post a vintage postcard image of my hometown, Menominee, Mich., in the
sidebar of this blog. Because each gets deleted a week later, I’m posting
a batch of these postcard images here as a permanent archive. Earlier
Menominee Postcard archives (posted on 6/26/10, 2/5/11, 6/17/11, 1/11/12,
7/28/12, and 10-3-13) can be accessed by going to the blog’s righthand column,
scrolling down to “Labels”, and clicking on “Archives”. There are also
archives of Marinette postcards there (Menominee’s twin city), as well as of my
dad’s family photos taken in Menominee in the 1940’s and 1950’s (“Vic’s
Photos”).
Love,
Dave
A Birds' Eye View of Downtown Menominee
According to
an 1883 encyclopedia description: Menominee is located on the delta lying
between the Menominee River and the shore of Green Bay, extending from the
railroad bridge to the river's mouth and one and a half miles along the bay
shore. The population approached 10,000 in 1883, and 2,000 men were
employed in the many large lumber mills, cutting 160,000,000 feet of lumber
each year. The county was organized in 1863, the first newspaper (the
Herald) was issued in 1863, the Menominee River Manufacturing Co.
(lumber) was incorporated in 1866, the First Presbyterian Church was erected in
1868, the railroad from Fort Howard (Green Bay) was completed in 1871, and the
city's first blast furnace opened in 1883.
Fishing on the Menominee River
Here is a
lone fisherman on the Menominee River in the early 1900’s. His craft
looks more like a raft than a boat. The river as seen in this photo is
narrower than it was at our house, and I wonder if this is the river channel
that ran behind Pig Island along the Marinette shore. As kids, we did a
little fishing for perch and sunfish, but we didn't have much
success. The Menominee River is a popular location for anglers
today, and I guess that was true a hundred years ago as well.
Snowstorm, 1909
This photo
was taken along Main St. (later Sheridan Road and now First St.) in Menominee
in 1909. We'd have snowstorms of this magnitude once in a long while
during my childhood, and it was always an event filled with wonder and endless
possibilities for play and adventure. Frankie St. Peter and I would build
a snow fort in front of our house on the west side of Sheridan Road, a couple
of other neighborhood kids would build theirs across from us on the east side,
and we’d lob snowballs at one another for hours.
Durow’s Resort, M-35
Durow’s
Resort was located along the Green Bay shore on M-35, roughly a quarter of a
mile north of the O’Hara’s home near Turtle Creek (if my memory is
correct). Elroy Durow, whose family owned the resort, was a high school
classmate of mine, and we were members of the Air Scouts together.
SS Ferdinand Schlesinger Great Lakes Freighter
From its
earliest days Menominee, with its location on Green Bay and the Menominee River,
has been a significant Great Lakes shipping port. This real photo
postcard from 1908 documents the visit of the SS Ferdinand Schlesinger from
Milwaukee. The ship was built in 1891, and Menominee was its winter
headquarters. On May 16, 1919, the Schlesinger foundered southeast of
Passage Island in Lake Superior, and, though the ship was lost, her crew of 22
was saved.
Train wreck, 1910s
This train
wreck occurred in Menominee County in the 1910s. The lumber and mining
booms in the latter half of the 1800's led to the expansion of railroad lines
in the the U.P. The Chicago and Northwestern Railroad line from Fort
Howard (now Green Bay, WI) to Menominee was opened in December, 1871, and the
line from Menominee to Escanaba was completed a year later. From there it
extended all the way to Lake Superior. Menominee's railroad bridge was
built in 1872.
The Grand Department Store
A.L. Sawyer
(1911) reports that Adolph E. Guensburg, born near Prague, came to Menominee in
1893, and he and his brother Emil, who joined him in 1898, operated the Grand
Department Store in Menominee. According to the American Cloak and
Suit Review, Vol. 10, the Grand Department Store was sold in 1915 to the
Wilson-Henes Co., the members of which were Walter Henes, Otmar Henes, and A.
M. Wilson.
Tourist Haven Cabins
Menominee is
the entry point to the Upper Peninsula via Highway 41 from Milwaukee, Chicago,
and other points south, so lots of tourists passed through or stopped for a
while. I don't recall the Tourist Haven Cabins myself, though they were
on M-35 where lots of our family friends lived.
Wells Lumber Company Fire, 4-13-31
The J. W.
Wells Lumber Co. burned down on April 13, 1931, with a loss of over $1
million. The fire spread to nearly 50 other buildings in the community,
and sparks were carried across the river to Marinette. Firemen reported
smelling kerosene at the site of the fire, and company president, A.W. Wells,
said he believed that the fire was caused by arson. The fire ended a
century of sawmill operations on the Menominee River.
Mystery Ship Seaport
The Alvin
Clark was a 105-foot, two-masted schooner that was constructed in 1847 and that
sank off Chambers Island in Green Bay in 1864. It was salvaged in 1969
and put on display at the Mystery Ship Seaport on the Menominee River at the
foot of Sixth Avenue. While the ship was in near-perfect condition when
it was raised, no plans were put in to effect for its conservation. It
rapidly deteriorated, and its remains were destroyed in 1994 to make way for a
parking lot. A group of our family members visited the Mystery Ship
Seaport in the 1980's, and we were pleasantly surprised to find that one of our
cousins was the tour guide.
Home Comfort Inn, 1940s
I think that
the Home Comfort Inn was along the Green Bay shore on M-35, but I can't swear
to it. There were a couple of tourist auto courts there in the 1940's
while we were growing up, and my parents used to put us up at one when we came
home for family reunions in the 1970’s and 80’s.
Cyril Quever’s Beer Garden, 1942, Meissner banquet
The owner of
this postcard reports that Meissner’s Miniature Bowling Banquet was held on May
13, 1942, at Cyril Quever’s Beer Garden in Menominee. According to ancestry.com, Cyril Quever’s Bar and Meissner’s Beer
Garden were located on 13th Street in Finn Town in Menominee. Cyril
Quever was born in 1903 and died in 1951.
Whittier Trail, Henes Park
Henes Park, a
50-acre park on the Green Bay shore, was donated to the city in 1907 by local
brewer John Henes. Its wooded nature paths are named after Schiller,
Goethe, Longfellow, Shakespeare, Whittier, etc. The park was designed by
landscape architect Ossian Cole Simonds, well-known for nature-based parks
including Palmer Woods in Detroit. We spent many happy times on the Henes
Park trails in our childhood, and now our grandchildren and their cousins go
there when visiting Menominee.
F. C. Nowack Coal and Ice Yard
When I worked
as a clerk at my grandfather’s Marinette Rexall drugstore, we’d get regular
deliveries of both coal and ice to the store, though I don’t know if they came
from Nowack’s. One of my occasional tasks was stoking the furnace with
chunks of coal. I believe that the blocks of ice were cut from Green Bay
in the winter and then stored under sawdust through the summer months, though
it’s hard to imagine how this was possible.
The Green Bay Shoreline
Green Bay, a
huge bay off of Lake Michigan, is 10 to 20 miles wide and 120 miles long,
extending from Green Bay, Wisconsin, at its south end, and up to Escanaba in
Michigan’s Delta County to the north. Menominee's main shopping district
is spread out along the Green Bay shoreline on First St., and most city parks
are on the bay as well. A number of our family friends had homes or
cottages on the shore, e.g., the Mars, Sargents, Caleys, O'Haras, Jacobsens,
Sawyers, and others. We spent many childhood hours swimming in the bay,
hiking along the beach, and occasionally fishing off the breakwater pier.
Gateway Café
Though it
doesn’t exist any more, I have pleasant memories of the Gateway Café as one of
the significant gathering places of my teenage years. It was located on
Ogden Avenue, just across the street from the St. Joseph-Lloyd hospital.
From age 16 onwards (i.e., the year that our driving privileges began), our
teenage peer group would get together at the Gateway after Friday night
football or basketball games and the post-game dance at the high school.
Our favorite order was a cheeseburger, fries, and a coke or chocolate
shake. However, it was often difficult to come up with that much money,
and one might have to settle for an order of French fries instead.
Pine Trees, Menominee, Mich.
The immense
logging industry that was centered in the Menominee and Marinette region in the
latter half of the 1800’s dealt mainly with the harvesting of white pines,
which were then floated down the Menominee River to local sawmills. We
had majestic Norway Pines in our front yard at river house, and the pine tree
is one of the iconic images of our youth.
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