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God's Country , we each know of such a place in America, don't destroy God's Country Current mood: accomplished Category: Travel and Places The Au Sable River flows east from the middle of Michigan's giant hand, the peninsula between Lake Huron and Lake Michigan. The river's four branches converge at Oscoda, about 50 miles from its Lake Huron mouth, when the longest branch, the North Branch, joins the Middle Branch. There the East and South branches have already added their waters and the river is wide and deep enough , with enough fell as it drops to Lake Huron's level , to provide electric power to a large area. Dams in these lower reaches prevent rainbow trout from returning to the river from the Great Lake as they once did. Other than the changes brought about by these dams, the river is constant in its course, content, Hazen L. Miller says in his 1963 book The Old Au Sable, "with building islands and cutting oxbows." In spite of its straight course mapmakers have it going all over the lower peninsula over the centuries after white man discovered it . A 1795 map calls the river in its approximity the "Beauvais River" (that's my mother's mother's maiden name !). Ten years later a map published in London has no rivers on the Lake Huron side of the state north of Saginaw (there's Simon and Garfunkel, "Michigan seems like a dream to me now, it took me 4 hours to hitchhike from Saginaw..." The Au Sable is about a four-hour drive from Saginaw., a city on a bay where the northwoods really start, right after a drawbridge).This London map has a R. Beauvau south of the "Monistie" River on the Lake Michigan side,and aso on the west coast, feeding Lake Michigan, the Rasin R., White R., and Rook R., which are never seen again on maps. An 1827 map gives Michigan the westward-flowing rivers The Black R., Kikalemazo, Grand R., Beavaise R., Sandy R., Manistie R., Plate R., and Ottaway R., and easterly-flowing rivers Raison, Clinton, Flint,R. Au Sable, and Thunder River. An 1830 atlas has a R. Ausable stripped of its branches and dwarfed in a map of Michigan territory. In 1833 the rivers of Michigan, by one map, are the P. Marquette, Sandy R., Platte R., Manistie R., Betsey's R., and Carp R. Flowing west, and Grindstone, Sable, Thunder, Sandy, and another Sandy thrown in for good measure flowing east. Ninety years later J. Paul Goode and Rand McNally show the Kalamazoo, Muskegon, and Manistee going west to Lake Michigan while the Au Sable by her lonesome goes to Lake Huron but at least it is in it's rightful place, nearly meeting the opposite-flowing Manistee River in the center of the northern part of the state. Much of the confusion was due to a reluctance to investigate this part of the state beyond its beaches. The Indians of the area, Chippewas and Ottawas, described the region as a hundred miles of shaking marshes to discourage white exploration.(An 1805 map calls the upper Peninsula "Country Abounding with Wild Animals.") The "Mud-au-bee-be-ton-ange", as the Indians called the river, region is indeed a hundred miles, and as for it being untrammeled, a Mapquest search on a computer bears this out todaythere is a lot of land, few roads, no towns for great distances around the area. Mud-au-bee-be-ton-ange meant "going from the interior to the lake" and described both the river and the Indians who traversed it by canoe. It is a relatively new river to us up until 1828 the Indians were not friendly , due to abuses at the hands of a trader named Reaume. In 1819 Saginaw was Indian land but a military outpost was established there and four brothers named Williams began a trading post outside the stockade in '28. It was well-known that Mackinaw was at the straits between the 2 Great Lakes but in 1840 no one knew how to proceed there over landfor hundreds of years settlements had stopped at the coasts. In 1831 Alexis de Tocqueville the great adventurer came to Saginaw and was warned not to go north of Pontiac, where the country was covered by an impenetrable forest full of nothing but wild beasts and Indians. Bears, beavers, otters, wolverines, porcupines and smaller animals abounded, and numerous herds of elk traversed the silent landscape ,and in winter packs of wolves pursued deer across the crusts of snow, according to a history of Michigan by James W. Lanman in 1834. A government survey was begun in 1840 so a road to Mackinaw could be built and a Williams brother was elected to be the guide. Thirteen men from Oakland County set out with B. O. Williams with scant provisions and plenty of misgivings, the shaking marsh story widely believed in. They found the Au Sable to be a large, deep, swiftly running water in the midst of dense pine woods . Although this wild land was best suited to tribal existence , the Indians could not successfully resist the incursions of the white man. Treaties negotiated in 1836 gave the Ottawas 3 cents an acre and the Iosco and Saginaw bands of the Chippewa $1000 a year in silver " forever"for their rights to these lands. By the 1970s there was a big stink when the descendants of these Indians tried to catch fish out of season . In 1920 there were 5 Michigan counties with less than 5,000 people and three were Au Sable landOscoda, Crawford, and Roscommon, with seventeen hundred to four thousand inhabitants .(Our woods and cabin were in Crawford, about three miles from the Crawford/ Oscoda County line, who's sign held many bullet holes as my little brothers learned to shoot their .22s.) The sawmill town of Grayling was built at the ancient Indian portage where canoes were carried overland from the Manistee River to the Au Sable near Lake Margrethe, originally Portage Lake. The Indians had so profusely used the area that it was rich in neolithic relics. Thick deposits of spear and arrow heads suggested a battleground, a factory, or both. With the Atlantic forests all milled, and a demand for lumber in the growing Midwest, the two rivers became important for the transportation of the logs of the trees that had sustained and sheltered them. Felled in winter and stocked behind dams, the logs were floated down the warmer waters to the coastal sawmill towns. The Au Sable was in many places narrow and choked by debris before the loggers came from Maine, Canada, and the Scandinavian countries. Pine needles along the banks were 6" deep and the rugged cedars, their roots unearthed by lightning and loosened by floods, fell across the river and stayed for years as sweepers. Passage was difficult before logging changed the river. The loggers sawed through obstructing logs or blasted them out, and built dams that sent the huge pine logs careening down the river , carrying everything along. There is no photographic record of the greatest event the Au Sable ever experiencedthere was neither time nor surplus personnel to take such pictures. After 1906, when the log runs were no more and this fact realized, pictures were staged with farmers standing around in the river with peavies and what logs could be rounded up. More than 1.3 billion feet of logs were run down the Au Sable between 1867 and 1883. They built the cities along the Great Lakes and ships, barges, telegraph poles, railroad ties and boxcars, then went on to build the less wooded areas of the prairie states. About 1879 the railroads reached Grayling making it possible to ship lumber from the area. Towns along the Au Sable survived the end of the logging era because the citizens embraced all the changes that bettered the community .The basic community stayed because of the health-giving qualities of the climate and the clean air. They adapted to their new reputation as resort townssportsmen were attracted to the isolated region noted for the tasty grayling fish and later for the best brook trout fishing in the country, and the opportunities for outdoor sports and recreation away from crowded, sometimes dingy cities south, and even east, such as in those big ones with stockyards and other polluting industry in New England. The great stretches of second-growth timber attracted more deer and other wild game than the original forest did, and the arrival of songbirds gave new value and charm to cabin-living along the river.A whip-poor-will's startling, sad cry in the quiet twilight would make one stand still and gaze at forest, stream, and sky as if at attention for the National Anthem. Night-fishermen were delighted by the hoots and silent flights of owls and in the spring and summer mornings one awakened to the jawing of numerous species of birdsrobins, wrens, orioles, cedar waxwings, brown thrashers, bluebirds, blackbirds, blue jays, tiny chickadees; nuthatches and woodpeckers drilling under bark; juncos, red-eyed vireos, many species of warbler, meadow larks, sparrows, goldfinches, and from the marshes, red-winged-blackbirds , all with distinctive notes . On the river fishermen and folks on home-made wood porches watched the silently swooping swallows and kingfishers , and the shadows of bats darting about the ground under backyard spotlights that attracted dozens of moths ; hikers paid heed to the warning of the chattering fox, red, grey, and black squirrels and crows when the shadow s of hawks tresspassed in the busily engaged forest; hunters and hikers startled woodcock and partridge who fluttered when flushed , gave low whistles, and clucked as they walked about in a circle on the trail in front of them a moment before diving into the thickest thickets nearby with the rustle of winged bodies. At first unscrupulous sorts tried to sell land they'd bought cheap in the get-out to Civil War veterans as excellent farmland, but the vets soon abandoned their homesteads on finding the land unsuitable for farming .Until then, there is little evidence of the woods ever having been visited by, let alone inhabited by, man. The arctic grayling disappeared as the waters warmed and a fish hatchery was built outside of Grayling to raise and let loose inported German brown trout. In 1878 deer and fish were not just sport for the pioneers but an important food supply. People could hunt anytime of year and as they liked and as much as they wanted , a sort of "As You'd Like It" life , one hunter even calling his cabin "Aswe Wood.". At the end of the 1800's , A. H. Mershon, a Saginaw lumberman, introduced to the Au Sable the specked brown trout and his 14-year-old son, William, who spent his life on the problems of preservation of the brown and brook trouts in the Au Sable River, leaving valuable writings due to his habit of keeping diaries.On May 12, 1901 he wrote "camped last night above the mouth of Big Creek." And on June 14, "Big Creekbrook trout scarcerainbow seemed plenty just at dusk. Avery took a 4.75 pound 23" on a small Cahill (No. 6 or No. 8) about 4 p.m. at the dam in Big Creek." (My land!) Mershon's party took 153 trout May 9; 159 on May 10; 141 on May 11; 91 on May 12. In May 1902 they got 2 nice rainbows in Big Creek, and on May 10, in 4 days, 8 men got 400 fish. On May 17 he "only" got 25 in 3 days "eight inches was the limit." Now we know why creels are made so large, and that the creek I grew up on once had plenty of trout. Without any scientific studies of the grayling , the State Board of Conservation made misguided, foolish efforts to save the species.1,500 were transplanted to warmer Southern Michigan streamsall died. Grayling could not be propagated. In 1885 it was announced that they were all gone from the Au Sable. In 1901 Mershon made strenuous efforts, along with the Michigan Game and Fish Protective League, to close the upper reaches of the Manistee , which still contained large numbers of grayling, in an attempt to let the grayling make a comeback. But the state senator from the Manistee District halted the move. Augustune Farr said it was "his river". The legislation deferred to his objections to restrictions upon it and the Governor was indifferent. The Manistee grayling vanished. From then until 1912 they were only found in the Otter River of the U.P. Then they were extinct state-wide. Mershon suffered a second defeat as a conversationist the repeal of the restriction of the Au Sable River to fly-fishing only. To Mershon and other leading anglers, true sportsmanship was synonymous with fly-fishing, not boat-fishing. In 1907 he obtained the passage of a fly-fishing law. The chances for survival for the little trout hooked on the lip by a fly against those of the one with a fatal wound from the hook swallowed with a piece of worm are obvious to any fisherman , but Warden Pierce stated in 1907 that he saw no reason for the law. "It looks to me", he said, "like an act to prevent the people who live in that section from catching trout, and to permit them to be caught by the fellows from the cities who go up there." Opposition continued to forment and in 1913 the act was repealed after a senator got up, and, like Marc Antony, worked on the feelings of his listeners by a touching description of the heartbreak of the boy beside the river deprived of his right to fish. He finished with Whittier's poem "The Barefoot Boy." The governor then would not veto the repeal. But at length these waters were again restricted to fly-fishing, which benefited the trout, which grew larger, the natives, who needed the business brought by the sportsmen, and with an education for the boy who now must learn to fish with flies. Mershon took another beating on another conservation measure dear to his heart. He proposed to make the post of Commissioner of Conservation an honorary one and thus remove it from politics. Hunting and fishing in Michigan for the market gave him much concern. The cold-storage houses in Saginaw held large quantities of game, an illegal practice after 1905. In 1910 he wrote the State Game warden "Wish you could do something about those who sell partridges and quail contrary to law," and gave names and instances. One of those he named was a fish dealer who'd been "previously frequently arrested but not by you in 5 years." The game wardens were usually political appointees who didn't have game preservation at heart. In 1907 he wrote the Governor "This department should be taken out of politics. I know you will smile at this and ...say there are not enough political awards to go around even now." He seemed to be succeeding with his energetic campaigning when the Governor in 1909 , Chase S. Osborn, wrote to Mershon that he would offer the newly created post of honorary commissioner to him. Too late it became apparent that strong undercover opposition made passage of the bill unlikely. The local game wardens feared being dislodged and fought it. Worse, favorable action in the governor's office was being sqelched by the hand of the governor's secretary, William Oates, who himself became State Game Warden. Osborn gave the bill's backers no support and Mershon was defeated. "Put not your trust in a Governor and a friend", he said. Condolences from Henry Ford did not soften his bitterness. He wrote in 1911,"I came to the conclusion last winter that I was out of tune with the people, that 99 out of 100 of them did not care a cuss about saving or taking care of anything." And in his rejection of the appointment as a delegate to a state conservation congress in 1911 he advised his old friend and fishing buddy, Governor Osborn, to "use a little ink eraser and put in a new name, for truly we are conservationists." He did get to see a pet idea--to establish game refuges throughout the stateapproved, , but only after force was applied by Rasmus Hanson who owned a tract the size of a township near Portage Lake. He wanted to see it become a game preserve and military reservation. Mershon bounced back from every defeat vigorously with a new attack on those who opposed or were indifferent to conservation of wildlife and forests. He wrote prodigiously to those who might helphundreds of letters over a 6-month period.. His antagonists included Theodore Rooevelt, real estate development, Commodore Perry. His spear was letter-writing, his sheild, unselfish devotion to the principles of conservation, his plumed helmet, the advocacy of fair play. One of the wrongs which always made Mershon leap on his stead and charge against the enemy was the promotion of farms in the Au Sable region by real estate development companies trying to unload lands bought cheaply at tax sales. He wrote a bristling letter to the secretary of one such company that it was.."a crime to advertise farming possibilities in this..worse than pauper land and climate" with "frost every blessed month of the year, so severe last August that it killed the young ash and beech trees" which he'd set out. I don't know who watches over me up there, shows awareness of me, sends me signs.( They do....) But I read in Miller's Old Au Sable book that if "the spirit of William Mershon could enjoy a visit to his old haunts along the North Branch, he would surely depart only reluctantly , and then with the knowledge that the stream is still beautiful and that, true to his hopes of an earlier day, the brook trout are again gaining in number and size under the restrictions of the fishermen to the sportive fly." Although it is unknown whether Indians ventured into the interior of the state that far north before the 1800's, the huge white pines suggest not; for this actually advanced culture practiced slash-and burn all over the U.S. for centuries to get food when and where they chose, by rounding their quarry up in a circle away from their camps with fire , an intelligent practice compared to the primitive European habit of standing in and smelling livestock feces. A Chippewa Indian actually moved into the town of Grayling in 1876 and became beloved by everyone.His real name was shop-nee-gaunse, Chippewa for "sewing needle", and some sources say it was his great-grandfather who was the Chief who took part in the Greenville Treaty in 1795 that put an end to warfare with Wyandottes, Delawares, Shawanoes, Ottawas, Pottattamas, and Miamis . "Shopps" came to hunt deer as there were none south of Bay City then .He called himself Chief David Shoppenhagon , or Shoppenagon , and settlers had no doubt about the chief part as he was able by talking to them to stop a war party of Sioux from Minnesota, the entire state of which was once part of Crawford County, and Chippewas from an uprising the Sioux were planning on the Au Sable banks. A Chippewa without great prestige could not have been expected to induce the hostile Indians to back off. Because of this and his great-man carraige and penchant for dressing in full regalia, a lumber mill asked him to represent them and attend lumbermen conventions. He traveled as far as Boston and Philadelphia, Detroit and Chicago.His profile became a trademark for quality. However the conventions of hotel life presented some problems for the Chief, as did the English language, which he could speak but not read. He slept on his hotel room floor beside the bed dressed in his regal attire, and handled communication with a sense of humor. Unable to read the menu he'd nonetheless study it and then ask the server if they had porcupine, muskrat, or beaver, and, told there was none, say prickily ,"What kind of hospitality is this?" He lived in Grayling on the north bank of the river where Highway 27 now crosses and where in the 1960's there was a canoe livery and now a motel called the Shoppenhagen. He was also a guide and trapper and was often visited by other Indians but only one other settled in Grayling, a Chippewa named Ke-chit-ago. (Almost sounds like Chicago, doesn't it?) At that time Grayling had many martin and fisher (a high-priced fur), and good otter, beaver, and mink trapping.Wolf, lynx, and bobcats were not considered fur-bearing. Shop-nee-gaunse first built a wigwam at the mouth of the East Branch where it empties into the main stream. When the Salling Hanson Lumber Co. bought a mill they gave him lumber to build a house on a lot on the river near the current U.S.27 bridge. History has no record that he claimed to be chief of his tribe but he was likely a medicine man in his youth , then considered both physicians and prophets.He was a man of more than ordinary intelligence and was either 3 years old or in his teens when General Lewis Cass met the Chippewa Tribe in Council Fire on the banks of Saginaw Bay in 1820. He was a great hunter, trapper, and expert marksman, He only began to lose the piercing keeness in his eyes when his third wife died at age 96. She was one of few survivors of the Chippewa Indian tribe and lived as a noted basket-weaver in Grayling for 31 years. As a guide , David must have thought as a deer or fox because his customers always came home with the full limit. He knew the river, woods, animals, and people. Although he lost most of his children he had a sense of humor rare for an Indian of the day. Shopenhagen loved to tell tall tales and when camping , at the evening campfire would draw the circumference of the earth with a stick and tell the Indians' belief as to the creation of the world. Then he'd have his companions war-dance around the fire. Once a conversation around a campfire centered on a whaling expedition some present had been on. They exaggerated the size of their quarry, the number of barrels of oil obtained, the capacity of the whale's maw and other things the Chief found incredible. So he topped the whalers' story with one of a gigantic Indian whose enormous height, width, and everything else rivaled the measurements of the whale. He then asked three whalers to rise and join hands in a circle. "So big around it was," he said , leaving them standing with joined hands. "What? " They said, puzzled. "What was?" "What do you think?" the Chief said scornfully."His big toe?" The Indians made up their long stories, called art-soo-kay, as they went along. For the Indian, time was something to live with , not to struggle against. Although he never became famous like Pontiac, Shopenhagon was much respected, for he contributed not to grief and strife but to understanding and the enjoyment of nature. The Chief told the settlers that the Manistee and Au Sable Rivers were traveled by Indians for hundreds of unrecorded years. They'd come up the Manistee from Lake Michigan to Portage Lake, now known as Lake Margrethe, pull their canoes over a couple of miles of land and put in in the Au Sable to descend to Lake Huron. Before the white man built dams to harness power for distant towns, the larger fish could ascend the stream and return to the Au Sable and Manistee. Six-foot sturgeons weighing 100 pounds were caught in the main stream Au Sable near the mouth of the North Branch, and many big pickeral were eaten there. Hundreds of men put in in scow boats at Grayling and take the 200 -mile trip by water to the mouth at Lake Huron before the dams were built. The woodlands changed after logging and fires took their toll. Mostly scraggly jack pines filled the plains land , along with poplar and black oak. The streams of the Au Sable ,upon all connecting, pour a big volume of fresh water into Lake Huron continuously. The swift, turbulent river has a natural current of 3 miles an hour but in places it increases to 6 to 7 miles an hour. It has many deep holes followed by shallow water where the pebbly or sandy bottoms ripple in the sunlight as water striders skim atop the surface.In many places you can walk to the other side of the river easily. One pioneer who watched a man in a life-or-death fight with a big buck in the water (the man had to hold its head under long enough to drown it)said that if the Au Sable could give up its secrets, many tales of Indian life and strife would would be revealed that would make for thrilling reading. In 1911 fifteen men took the trails once made by hunters and trappers to establish a camp near Lovells on the North Branch, about 9 miles from our cabin, and the lumbering of this region began. Half-a- mile from our property's western edge the down-river road east from Grayling crossed the North Branch, and near this crossing Ed Kellogg built a cabin and bridge in 1903.The bridge was later replaced with the concrete one that stands today. In 1914 Ed built a larger log house for his 7 girls and 7 boys which still stands. About a mile to the south Rory Frazier built a cabin ,and a pole bridge across the North Branch. The old stagecoach road crossed the river here .Rory was known as an awful drinker. If he went to Grayling for provisions he might not return for quite awhile. His daughter Lizzie had to drive a team of western ponies into town to get feed and groceries. She drove all alone at the age of 12 and stopped halfway to Grayling at the Schreiber farm to water the horses. It would be nightfall when she reached the Schreibers' on the return trip but she went on home. Rory had cattle and Lizzie had to herd them. She did so bareback on a blind mustang.She would ride it at a gallop though the woods. There were few fly-fishermen at this time. No longer did the giant trees arch the stream, and summer sunshine poured in , giving the grayling and trout less protection and warmer waters than they liked. Nonetheless, the spring-fed stream is a stable 50 degrees in summer and rarely freezes over in the winter. The origin from springs helps to clear the water quickly after storms and any day of the year its gravel bed can clearly be seen except in the turbulent and deep waters. Soon after 1920 a new growth of trees began to shade the river. The banks are now well-wooded with a great variety of treesash, linden, ironwood, oak, elm, beech and poplar. Spruce is thick in the boggy lowland and there are plenty of cedars to feed browsing deer all winter. June berry, wild cherry, and wild plum blossoms light up the spring..The flooded banks are also brightened by golden yellow cowslips. Then come wild irises and lilies and in August, white and purple gentian and the tall Joe Pye weed. All kinds of wild blossoms color the dappled shade on the loam of the banks in May and early June after the first flower, the tiny white and pink arbutus, sprout following the last snowfall. Later buttercups and the native columbine appear, and yellow dandelions and purple violets. Some of the Cedars and the larger white and Norway pines have girths of 8 feet and better .As you wade the stream the brilliant white birch groves stand out against the dark background of the firs. Deer trail through the woods evenings to eat the succulent weeds growing in patches of silt along the river bottom and drink the crystal clear waters, which leave no sediment in a glass unless it is caddis hatch time.(Then the caddis mar the water.)Chipmunks hang out in woodpiles while raccoons turn stones at the bank looking for crayfish. In 1925 another era ended when the tracks were torn up , useless in competition with one's private automobile. The major tributary of the North Branch, Big Creek, is a half mile east of it on Star Route 1, called North Down River Road most of its trek from Grayling. A mile closer to Grayling a dirt road called Morley Road comes off itwe met Morley descendant Charlie Morley as kids, and his boxer, who came to visit our cabinand Morley Road has an old logging trail to one side of it and a dirt road to the other off which our two-track , winding driveway sprang, next to the Fire Lane across Blondie Dam's patches of old road. Big Creek's most famous property is the Big Creek Lodge, which exclusive membership averages 5 families. About 10 miles south where Down River Road crosses the North Branch by Kellogg's Bridge, a half-mile from a nearly impenetrable part of our land ,on some of Rory Frazier's old land stands the Kellogg homestead, where Ed Kellogg spent half his life inhaling the exhilarating northern air. Downstream Scott's Lodge pleased hundreds of guests with meals puncilitously served by waitresses recruited from backwoods high schools to diners in fishing clothes fresh from the stream. There were tablecloths and complete sets of silverwareno farm style with random foods set out on tables to be grabbed. This is the Au Sable I recall, and a stretch as wide and long as a lake with no cabins or people on it , heavily timbered and visited by bald eagles and many deer along with canoeists , where you feel you are in infinite greatness, even on a grey day. Hunting and trapping had sustained the Chippewa for unrecorded generations, but the pioneers and early settlers had better equipment and better success. In Indian times deer were not plentiful due to big lanky timber wolves weighing 40 to 50 pounds, hunting in packs and howling dismally over long distances. The lynx's scream too could be heard long distances away, just as we could hear our screen door slam from half-a-mile up the creek .In the Indians' time there were badger and red, grey, and black fox, and ravens and spruce hens. In my day there were groundhogs and snowshoe hares and jack rabbits and partridge, woodcock, hoot owls and tiny barn owls. Winters on the river were so cold in both eras that it hurt your throat if you breathed too fast. Civil War veterans came to homestead free land but most failed.. Crawford County has the second lowest agricultural development potential of all Michigan counties .(Sleeping Bear Dunes likely the lowest.)The soil is comprised of sand or sandy loam soil that lacks moisture retention and blows in the wind .The organic matter of humus in the plow layer is a very thin 2 inches or sothat's why we kids could with our boot heels write black words and draw black arrows easily on the white roads. There are killing frosts every month of the year .The frost-free season is about May 27 to September 15, 110 days. But by 1948 another industry had begunoil drilling. At that time there were 25 producing wells and 27 others being drilled. Fred Bear built a bow factory out of Grayling and snow-skiing was championed and later, snow-mobiling. Nonetheless, the Au Sable became chiefly visited for its trout fishing , deer and partridge and woodcock hunting, and the salubrious quality of its air. The Kirtland's Warbler with it'd sweetest of songs is found only in the Au Sable region in summer and the Bahamas in winter, and no one else has the pleasure of knowing this sweet little bird. Luminescent luna moths clung to screen doors and viceroy and monarch butterflies looking much alike join many other varieties enjoying the woods and every animal and man enjoys the woods and its wild crops of blueberries, red and purple raspberries, huckleberries, spearmint, wintergreen berries, and the color in wild choke-cherries. Their influence is in cheering and refreshing the mind and creating an atmosphere of relish and contentment. In his book The Old Au Sable, Hazen L. Miller says if the Michigan grayling were still with us it would rise and take a bow.."it took almost anything elsebits of cloth from a hooked rug, cherry blossomswhatever the fishermen or Nature offered." Miller adds"In a paraphrase of an encomium to the strawberry Mershon wrote,"Doubtless God could make a better fish than the Michigan grayling but doubtless He never did." During the grayling's time the river had no trout .The Grayling were not as big as trout, the largest rarely over 18", and took the same bait in the same manner. Bolder than trout, grayling would rise 20 times at a fly and if you missed him, rise again. His mouth was so tender that he was lost more often after being hooked than any other fish. In 1880 it was supposed that the grayling did not exist on the North American continent except in Alaska . The white-meated fish with all the game quaities of trout was known as white trout and Crawford County trout until a specimen was sent in alcohol to the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences in 1865 and given the scientific name Thymellus tricolor. In 1886 trout were unknown to the Au Sable and Manistee.The European species of grayling seems to have been introduced to England when under the religious sway of the see of Rome, because it was mainy found in rivers near the ruins of old monasteries. But it was also found in some of the streams of the Alpine valleys, and some of the rivers of Sweden and Norway, The European streams were not as populated with grayling though, as Michigan's, because trout, who feed on the young of all fish, were found in these same European rivers, In Michigan, the fry of their own species and of other fishes were never found in the grayling's stomach .Their only food appeared to be the flies that lay their eggs in running water and the larvae of such flies .With no trout to eat them in the Au Sable, they abounded there. Grayling were spring spawners (late April and early May).All other genre of the salmon family spawned in autumn, Like western salmon, they did not push for the sources of their rivers , leaping falls and flapping sideways over shallows, to find some little rivulet as trout do, and the duration of their spawning was limited to a few days. Experts who went to the Au Sable, expressed the ova, fertilized it and brought it east to the Atlantic states, would find them not ready to spawn and then, going the next year a week later, that they'd already spawned. The grayling avoided strong turbulent water and liked deep waters. It avoided clay so common to the beds of Michigan rivers , preferring gravel and sand. It would rise straight up, sharp and sudden, and when its attention was drawn to the artificial line , it didn't turn back, like a trout, on seeing the angler,but disregarded him entirely.When running a river with the speed of its current, even if the boat is poled along downstream, it frequently took the fly within a few feet of the pole or boat.it was not as chary a fish as the trout but went for anything bearing the remotest resemblance to life even on water as smooth as a mirror. White cedars fringe the banks of river s a few miles below their sources, appearing to love spring water, and not appearing until the stream is that temperature. The current washes the loose soil from these cedars' roots, causing them to incline over and at last fall in the riverthese are called sweepers. The Au Sable, constantly replenished with spring water and owing to its slight watershed a sandy topsoil , rises less than 2 feet in the spring, thus is not discolored by high water. Such streams here and in Europe are the home of the grayling, which loves water of a low,even temperature and a smooth, steady current. In the late 1800's grayling were in season nearly all winter , allowing sportsmen to unite hunting with fishing after the first of September. In an 1879-1880 volume of Scribner's Monthly, Thaddeus Norris wrote of this and that the Au Sable region "has, of course, none of the awe-inspiring scenery we find on the shores of Lake Superior, but with its graceful cedars projecting at a sharp angle from the banks, and every bend of the stream opening a new view, it is novel and pleasing to one who has been shut up all winter in a crowded city...one only hears that weird sound caused by the rubbing of the branch of one tree against that of another as they are swayed to and fro by the wind...otherwise all is silent as death." When the pines disappeared, erosion allowed rains to wash soil into the streams and the grayling could not live in muddy, dirty water. No longer shaded, the temperature rose, and the grayling needed water almost as cold as ice. The logs raked the spawning beds as they ran down river, destroying eggs and young fish. The bark was ground off the Norway pines in the jams, filling the stream with fine particles that sifted into the grayling's gills. Dead ones with festered gills had bark particles in them every time. This, the removal of the sweepers to run the logs, and the ease with which the fish got himself nabbed, contributed to the vanishing of the Au Sable grayling. It's gone forever with the huge pines and the Michigan that used to be. Michigan became a state in 1837, when the U.S. surveys of the lower peninsula had been newly completed. However the first state geologist, Douglas Houghton, recommended that the remainder of the lower peninsula be subdivided into counties to assist him in making his survey maps. It was then known as Crawford County and embraced the upper portion of Michigan and Wisconsin. In 1834 the establishment of the Territory of Wisconsin discontinued this large area and the former Michigan Crawford became known as Michilmackinac. It isn't the present Crawford County...that was named Shawono in 1840. Shawono means "southern" and was applied by others, not the Indian peoples themselves, to the tribe of Indians we now call Shawnees. In 1845 this area was changed by law to Crawford County, although it is difficult to determine why; if it was to keep the old name going or to recognize an Ohio surveyor who'd passed away named that .In 1879 the village of Cheney was named the temporary county seat. Little is known of what the community on the banks of the Au Sable were called those days. It is said to have been called Au Sable by one source, and Forest by another.. In 1870 there were two buildings, an old pioneer recalled, but no name. In 1873 or '74 the locals felt Crawford too common a name and voted to change it to Grayling in honor of the local species of trout so abundant in the river. The 1875-76 state gazetteer says a new town, settled only in 1873 on the Au Sable, offered good water power , was surrounded by pine forest, and shipped venizon , furs, whortleberries and grayling fish. This town was a village and Post office in Crawford County 200 miles from Detroit. Lunbering was not an industry at that time from the business directory 's perspective., which listed only a shoemaker, restaurant, land agent, station agent, hotel, and general store. But railroads were not commonly extended to areas where there was neither lumbering or large populations, suggesting the state records were incorrect. Two men, Hanson and Mickelson set up business in 1876 after finding timberlands available for logging. They were joined by Salling and negotiated for timberland before starting a jobber logging expedition. As jobbers the new company could secure advance payments on logs as works in progress. Within 5 years they boosted their volume of timber cutting to a point where the old Lansing, Jackson and Saginaw Rairoad could be prevailed upon to extend its line into Crawford County. But don't mistake Crawford for the foundation for lumbering in Michiganmills in the Saginaw Valley, Huron shore, Muskegon Lake, Manistee,Grand Haven, Menominee, Flint, Pere Marquette railway, White Lake, Detroit, St. Clair River , Jackson, Lansing, and Saginaw RR. and Saugatuck and Ludington had already cut millions of feet. Only the pine forests in the northern part of the lower peninsula had scarcely been touched .In 1867 a portable mill was set up in Grayling and in 1878, a planing mill was established and run by Dr. Oscar Palmer, although other records show Palmer arriving in 1881 to be a farmer ( for which the authors of "100 years of Grayling History", a booklet put out by the city in 1972, "plead confusion.") Records show farmers were in the area as early as December 1872. While the community's growth was definitely due to its proximity to the Au Sable, the railroad and the mighty forests, the true growth of any community is the dedication of the citizens to what they believe in homes, medical care, churches, schools, healthy climate, and, certainly, steady income. A timetable printed around the 1930's shows the likey progression of Grayling from 2 buildings to the busy town it was by 1931, to which I've added what I know: 1872-Opening of the railroad and Crawford Station 1874-Crawford Station's name changed to Grayling 1876-David Shoppenagon and his family move to Grayling from the Saginaw Valley at the same time as lumbering interests in the form of 3 Danes Rasmus Hanson, Nels Mickelson, and Nels Peter Olson. Also, Frank Deckrow arrived with a party of hunters from Maine. 1878-E. N. Salling joins Hanson and Michelson to form Salling, Hanson and Co. 1880-Henry Stephan arrives with his family . Population 1159. 1881-Feldhausers, Neiderers, Schreiders, Hoeslies come by wagon and settle on west side of river below Stephans. Tom Wakeley settles close to present Wakeley Bridge. Town newspaper, Crawford County Avalance, begins. 1882- Methodist Episcopal Church erected. 1883-Feldhauser School opened. Grayling School opened a year or so earlier but date unknown. 1885-St. Mary's Catholic Church built. 1888-Grayling School graduates first senior class including Edward Hartwick and Matilda Hanson.(Hartwick's wife later donated the acreage that is Hartwick Pines State Park to Michigan, with the last of the big white pines.) The Michigan State Gazetter for 1888 says the surrounding country is chiefly pine forest, shipments chiefly lumber, village doubled in population within the last two years with improvements commensurate with its rise. Waterworks and electric lights were put in by Salling Hanson and Co. At a cost of $10,000. Two churchesPresbyterian and M.E., a courthouse, school, 2 hotels, and 200 other buildings, chiefly residences, were put in for $300,000.There is a bank, 3 hotels, 2 sawmills, a planing mill and shingle mill, American Telegraph, and Western Union Mails, and a Railroad due. Pop. 1,500.1890-population of county 2,962. 1891-general hardware and sporting goods store opens 1892-Salling, Hanson & Co. Owns 60,000 acres and builds a bandmill. 1893-Lovells is established south east of Grayling. 1898-bank fails. Fire destroys a block of businesses and the Salling Hanson lumber yard.Skating rink built to offer Michigan's first winter sports. 1900-Pop. 2943 in county. 228 farms. John B. Redlund moves his shingle mill from Roscommon and floats it downriver to the mouth of the North Branch. 1903-Grayling incorporated as a village. Kelloggs settlement established.. 1908-R. Hanson and Sons Lumber Co. Organized. 1910-County pop. 3934Mercy Hospital started. 1911-Rasmus Hanson attempts to attract Michigan National Guard into accepting Lk. Margarethe site (formerly Portage Lake) for its permanent camp. 1913-National Guard accepts the free land 1916-Shoppenhagons Hotel opens 1917-Grayling has 8 mills and a DuPont factory 1920-Grayling pop. 4045. 1921-develops state's first winter sports area 1927-Last whistle blows at Salling Hanson Mill. Hanson dies. (Paul H Young and wife buy cabin on mainstream and begin to introduce sons Paulie, 6, and Jackie, 4, to Au Sable life) 1931-Bank of Grayling fails. Grayling State Bank established. The Young boys (my dad and uncle) play with the Wakely children, whose folks are river guides. 1935- At 14 and 12, the Young boys are left on the river alone all summer, while their folks manage the fly-rod business in Detroit, to build a boathouse for their river boat. The boat has a live bait well in it and is 28 across, so a solo fisherman can hold a pole in one hand and fish with the other, and pole the boat completely around, standing in front--designed specifically for this particular river. The boathouse has a moose rack on it and still stands. Today kids that age left alone would be taken by child abuse investigators. They were fine, keeping their milk cold in the river.(Kids w/o a refrigerator today would be taken by etc.) 1941--The Young boys go off to war where Paul goes on 48 missions and 2 doubles as a bombadier. Paul Sr. modifies the bamboo rod so they can take them on the plane with them. 1962--Paul H. Young dies enjoying near-legendary cult status as a master bamboo rod inventor (McClane's New Standard Fishing Encyclopedia). Later the conservation group Trout Unlimited is formed and the first chapter is named for Paul for his conservation efforts in his early proponency of catch-and-release. His rods become collectibles. Ads say that the land is opportunity especially for agriculture."Acknowledged by scientific experts to possess every requisite of climate and soil for the growing of every fruit, cereal, and vegetable kind.Where you can produce fruit without irrigation surpassing in flavor any raised on irrigated land costing 20 times as much, engage in stock raising on any scale; climate, air, water and natural conditions are such to make it a vast sanitarium , where schools, churches, lodges, roads to the advantages that go to make life worth living are already provided , wheat, rye, buckwheat, corn, oats, barley, potatos, turnips, carrots, beans, beets, peas, rape, timothy , clover, red top millet, and alfalfa. The high altitude contributres much to the bracing and salubrious quality of the air. The forests of pine undoubtably do the same one of the healthiest climates in healthy northern Michigan .Best brook trout fishing in country and spring -fed lakes stocked with black bass and other game fish. Great stretches of second-growth timber in the cut-over lands afford better feed and protection for deer than did the original forests. Sturdy character of people , part Native-born Americans from south Michigan and Middle West, balance mainly Danish whom no better class of immigrants ever came to the U. S. Brook trout fishing excellent. Rainbow and German brown were being introduced and seem readily to adapt. Ski, ski jump, ice skate, ride world's fastest toboggans, 100 mph on iced steel tracks. Snow sculptures. Quality of white pine never been seen before or found since. Ducks, geese, otter, and mink." This was advertized when salt tablets could be called "Smith's Magic Head and Muscle Ache Pills" and sunflower oil as "Dr. Medico's Magic Elixir ". None the less there really is something about the ozone and ionosphere of the Au Sable region that rejuvenates spirits and soul, although all that stuff about farming was greatly exaggerated. The lure and lore of Michigan's great white pines attracted many a settler, as my great-aunt , historian Eva Farrior, wrote in her memoirs in explaining why my grandfather Young's father brought Grampa and all his siblings to Michigan from Canada when they were kids, where they settled near Bear Lake on the Manistee side of the portage between the Au Sable and the Manistee that carried Indians for centuries from Great Lake to Great Lake across the wild northern part of the state. 1963-Paul H. Young's son buys 55 acres with 3,800 feet on stream and two cabins when his kids are small (me, 8) and he, his wife, and children (including me) spend most of their lives on the Au Sable .(Until I was 21. And I went back to visit frequently, and took my kids on a 4-day, 3-night canoe trip down the Main Branch, putting in at McMasters Bridge and getting out at Parmalee, passing the boathouse my dad built as a boy on the way. Every rental canoe at the 15 or so liveries had a plaque advising consideration for fishermen courtesy the Paul H. Young Chapter of Trout Unlimited.And that's the story I know of the Au Sable River. Except for one thing. I had two little brothers who were both gone by the time I took my children there, and I had spent half my life outdoors there trying to get close to a deer for a unique experience. These are not Greyhound-sized, ribby Florida deer, or the small friendly deer of Zion National Park in Utah--they are awesome, huge Virginia white tails many who have lived their whole lives without ever being seen by man. I never got close -close, not face to face, just white tail disappearing-close. As I walked through our woods midday I had the camcorder on and stopped at a cedar swamp we once played at and talked aloud to my brother's spirits so tangible in that high high sky. A noise told me I was, embaressingly, not alone. I waited for my kid or a fisherman to apppear. But it was a young buck. And he came within 6 feet of me and walked a dozen circles around me, snorting and blowing and eyeing me warily.Then it went behind a tree--or thought it did, but if you look at the picture of "my bro" the deer below, you'll see he wasn't hid at all. It was certainly a shivery-awesome experience. Like I said, my place is God's Country, no doubt. |
WHAT'S THE AU SABLE? A LAND SO WILD NO INDIAN VENTURED THAT FAR INTO MICHIGAN UNTIL THE 1800's |
The first people to venture into the interior of the northern lower penninsula of Michigan were sepia, not red. No one was sepia before the invention of photography, so now you know when they first got there.Explored by the French trappers, it later became home to Indians from the southern part of the state, the Ottawa, and the Chippewa, and Indians from the Midwestern United States, and Scandanavian loggers and then men of Danish descent reaching the state after the Civil War for it's promise of giant white pines, health-inducing air, and excellent farming potential (which was a lie by those stuck with large tracts of land and no interest in it by anyone, due to the 100 miles of shaking brush the Indians told trappers was there). Imagine the men and sometimes families on the beaches of Lakes Huron and Michigan watching the large steamers appear on the horizon bringing new settlers to the deserted state . There were people on both coasts but few dared enter the wooded interior lands. |
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