BIG Thumb BIG Change

Today I prowled the back roads of Michigan's thumb in the fullness of summer. It is a place of giant changing landscapes and structures. Disappearing are the immense gambrel-roofed barns and their silos. Today they stand as obsolete reminders of when dairy farming was common.
http://detroityes.com/webisodes/2010/rural-63615.jpg

Gone is the family farm with the "back forty" and a Ford tractor, replaced by thousand acre fields, factory farms and mega machines. Below, a massive sugar beet piling machine sits in a sugar beet staging station outside Kinde awaiting the coming harvest.
http://detroityes.com/webisodes/2010...ugar-63622.jpg

A corner store fades away in Pinebog. Giant retail outlets long ago devastated small retail.
http://detroityes.com/webisodes/2010...ebog-63618.jpg

Outside Elkton a massive 21st Century windmill dwarfs a 19th Century farm.
http://detroityes.com/webisodes/2010...warf-63640.jpg

Now the largest structures in the thumb, displacing the long reign of the grain elevators, windmills flip peacefully in the summer breeze.
http://detroityes.com/webisodes/2010...mill-63636.jpg

'Our Lady of the Cornfields', the distant towers St. Agatha's of Gagetown rises above the landscape.
http://detroityes.com/webisodes/2010...atha-63642.jpg

Many small towns are suffering the same fate as our inner cities, declining population, high unemployment, abandoned downtowns and blight.
http://detroityes.com/webisodes/2010...town-63644.jpg

St. Agatha's School is long closed, so is this meeting hall with overgrown sidewalk, behind the church.
http://detroityes.com/webisodes/2010...ties-63656.jpg

A nearby attraction is the immense octagon barn with its soaring cathedral-like interior vault. A masterpiece of balloon construction these barns were thought to be future of agriculture. Ironically they may be the only barns to survive due their majesty.
http://detroityes.com/webisodes/2010...rior-63651.jpg

Magnificent within and without, the 1924-built barn towers 70 feet above the prairie.
http://detroityes.com/webisodes/2010...xter-63653.jpg

Silos with the roofs gone are common. Often they are seen alone in the corn, their barns long gone, plowed under for more corn. I speculate that the cost of their removal and lack of salvage value preserves them. And so this summer day's tour ends with this iconic red with white trim barn.
http://detroityes.com/webisodes/2010/rural-63660.jpg

Very nice, thanks Lowell. I think we're all so lucky to have Michigan and Ontario as our backyards. I think my favorite in this series is the collapsed store. I've been wanting to explore ghost towns in Ontario but I just never seem to get the time :[[

My step brother lives out in Roseville, and his grandfather owns an incredibly old farm somewhere not far from Roseville. I wish I knew the name of the farm, which as far as I know isn't a functional farm anymore. It's from the 1800's I know that much, and they tell me that people are found on the property all the time taking photos of the ruins. I'm gonna try and find out the name of the place, I'm sure some of you would enjoy shooting it.

Dear Lowell,

Your "Thumb", while glum, is a plum.

Pieter

Mag, I used to go to a place up around Strathroy. Don't remember much about it now though. Distant relatives of some sort.

|My brother is maintenance operator for Vestas, one of the largest companies in windenergy. These windmills are very common here in the Nehtlernads. Place the Google streetview antwhere on this map. I'd be amazed if you find a place there without one of those windmills.

Thanks for the Pidgeon pics. I've been wanting to see those for quite some time, but it is off the beaten path. The difference in perspective between the two are remarkable. I had always assumed these were way out in the fields, but it appears to be not the case in all instances.

Beautiful, thanks for sharing this great little road trip.

"Today they stand as obsolete reminders of when dairy farming was common."

Dairy farming is still big business in the Thumb. They're called CAFOs [[combined animal feeding operations). Often thousands of dairy cows in pole building sheds. They never get outside and live an average of 4 - 5 years. The resulting manure is spread on the fields which are tiled, carrying it into the drains, streams & rivers thence into Saginaw Bay and Lake Huron. Take a look at Willow Creek [[Huron City) on Google Earth as it empties into Lake Huron. Looks like a toilet flushing.

Is that what that is? That certainly is pretty brown.
Link

Nice pics!

Seems like the 'abandonment' thing has been going on for decades. I remember as a teenager summering in Lexington... it was the early 1970s, before gas conservation was even a blip on our radar. We would pile into whoever's car and drive west down whatever road, deep into the Sanilac County farmlands just to ...drive.

Now and then, we'd spy an obviously-long-vacant farm house, and trespass. There was almost never furniture or decor left inside even though windows were usually intact [[doors were invariably unlocked or the lock was gone). Sometimes old faded wallpaper still clung in a bedroom, or a hand-pump for water was still poised over the kitchen sink, and we'd speculate about what sort of family and life used to be there.

Every place had collapsed or nearly-collapsed outbuildings and rusted farm implements in the surrounding pastures. We guessed - back then - that some depression-era farmer couldn't make the farm work, or perhaps lost it all to the bank due to the economy of the times.

Some things never change, and it seems like we never learn...

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Originally Posted by Eastburn

Dairy farming is still big business in the Thumb. They're called CAFOs [[combined animal feeding operations). Often thousands of dairy cows in pole building sheds. They never get outside and live an average of 4 - 5 years. The resulting manure is spread on the fields which are tiled, carrying it into the drains, streams & rivers thence into Saginaw Bay and Lake Huron. Take a look at Willow Creek [[Huron City) on Google Earth as it empties into Lake Huron. Looks like a toilet flushing.

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You are quite right. What I meant was the family farm style dairy operation where every farm had cows and often pigs, sheep and other livestock. These required large barns to store baled hay and silos for storage feed silage. Manure was saved and spread on the fields for fertilizer. Everywhere you drove you would see herds and pastures.

Today's giant rolled bales, wrapped in plastic, no longer require costly barns and silos for storage. Nor are large pastures. Consequently the operations are managed in assembly-line style polebarn and feed lot operations. With their large herd concentration and low-lying profiles they are a rare sight. Amazingly I didn't see one cow yesterday, although I did see some buffalo and alpacas.

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Originally Posted by fryar

Is that what that is? That certainly is pretty brown.
Link

Nice pics!

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That's Willow Creek. A lot of that crap ends up right on our shoreline.

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Originally Posted by Lowell

You are quite right. What I meant was the family farm style dairy operation where every farm had cows and often pigs, sheep and other livestock. These required large barns to store baled hay and silos for storage feed silage. Manure was saved and spread on the fields for fertilizer. Everywhere you drove you would see herds and pastures.

Today's giant rolled bales, wrapped in plastic, no longer require costly barns and silos for storage. Nor are large pastures. Consequently the operations are managed in assembly-line style polebarn and feed lot operations. With their large herd concentration and low-lying profiles they are a rare sight. Amazingly I didn't see one cow yesterday, although I did see some buffalo and alpacas.

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I live in Huron County and have been observing the changes you noted, Lowell.

An interesting thing is that the population of Huron County has been constant [[30,000 - 35,000) for over 100 years. Still a pretty good place to live if you can deal with a 50 mile round trip [[to Bad Axe) for groceries like we do.

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Originally Posted by Eastburn

I live in Huron County and have been observing the changes you noted, Lowell.

An interesting thing is that the population of Huron County has been constant [[30,000 - 35,000) for over 100 years. Still a pretty good place to live if you can deal with a 50 mile round trip [[to Bad Axe) for groceries like we do.

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Yeah, but you can get Chinese at China King when you go, and cinnamon rolls at Murphy's

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Originally Posted by jcole

Yeah, but you can get Chinese at China King when you go, and cinnamon rolls at Murphy's

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True dat. I'm not really complaining. We just have to get down to "The City" [[that's anything south of I69) to do any real shopping.

You mean there's more that just WAL-MART??

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Originally Posted by Eastburn

I live in Huron County and have been observing the changes you noted, Lowell.

An interesting thing is that the population of Huron County has been constant [[30,000 - 35,000) for over 100 years. Still a pretty good place to live if you can deal with a 50 mile round trip [[to Bad Axe) for groceries like we do.

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How bout when you get a nice nor' Easterner come wintertime?? :confused::eek:

Great photos, Lowell. Many years have passed since I used to go pheasant hunting near Deckerville, in Sanilac county, but even then the flatness of the thumb was depressing to me. Sort of like Florida without palm trees. However, your eye sure picked some pretty shots.

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Originally Posted by jcole

Yeah, but you can get Chinese at China King when you go, and cinnamon rolls at Murphy's

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I enjoyed both of those places over the weekend :D...except I always go with the nutty topped part cinnamon roll/part doughnut thingy at Murphy's

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Originally Posted by Wintersmommy

I enjoyed both of those places over the weekend :D...except I always go with the nutty topped part cinnamon roll/part doughnut thingy at Murphy's

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I bought my car at Ordus Lincoln/Mercury and every time we need to do something with the car, we eat at China King. I used to like the clothing store on the corner, but it was closed last time I was there

Lowell, if you'd continued north on Pinnebog road after you shot the pic of the general store ruins, you would have seen lots of cows-there's a large dairy farm on the right hand side about 1/4 mile north of the Pinnebog Road/Kinde Road intersection.

I used to love the general store ruins, but it seems they've finally begun to collapse in the 5 or so years since I stopped traveling that way as a cutoff to my family's former cottage up at Oak Beach.

the next time i find $20 in gas money burning a hole in my pocket, i should take a drive up there. 30 years of driving through the thumb always made me sad to see the pockets of poverty and decay. in the fall, i'd feel doubly wistful, although passing by a sugar beet factory at harvest time was always an incredible sight. i've never seen piles of anything so massive!

next time you're up there, you'd probably appreciate the old grindstone factory in Grindstone City, as well as a fantastically intact old storefront oddly placed [[a beautiful urban storefront in the middle of nowhere-as if there was a city around it that vanished) on the SW corner of Copeland and Rouse in Grindstone City. be sure to stop off for a giant yet amazingly cheap cone of Stroh's ice cream at the General Store on Copeland.

Great tour and photos, Lowell.

I have noticed this as long as I can remember. My grandparents had a farm in Avoca. As a kid my dad worked on many farms in the area. When we would visit he would say "Look at that old farm falling into disrepair." Now they just tear down the fences and plant one crop in a hundred acres.

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Originally Posted by jcole

I bought my car at Ordus Lincoln/Mercury and every time we need to do something with the car, we eat at China King. I used to like the clothing store on the corner, but it was closed last time I was there

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Long drive up Van Dyke, even from Almont, isn't it?
Bad Axe is somewhere near what would be 100 Mile Rd & Van Dyke,
Guess Almont would be 40 Mile Rd or so.

Worth the drive for a fair deal at a small town car dealer, though, isn't it?
That old dealership had Ford, Mercury, and Chrysler. Lost Chrysler when dealers were cut last year- glad they stayed in business.
I remember when Mickowski bought the GM dealer in Bad Axe as an 'annex' to their Detroit Dealership. Huron County folks wanted nothing to do with a 'mega dealer', acres of cars, etc.

It's a long drive, but a nice one, and you'll never meet a nicer family than the Ordus's. We have a mutual acquaintance who suggested them to me.
Yes, Almont is 40 Mile and Van Dyke, unofficially. It's about an hour and a half up to Bad Axe, but there's no traffic.

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Originally Posted by Tractor75

I have noticed this as long as I can remember. My grandparents had a farm in Avoca. As a kid my dad worked on many farms in the area. When we would visit he would say "Look at that old farm falling into disrepair." Now they just tear down the fences and plant one crop in a hundred acres.

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Fortunately, it is too far from any major cities to become subdivisions.
Still some of the most fertile farm land in the country.
Mega farmers seem to have have taken over, planting 100's of acres.

But some small farms survive there- The Amish communities in the Thumb have grown- they're attracted to that good farm ground, and reasonable land prices.

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Originally Posted by jcole

It's a long drive, but a nice one, and you'll never meet a nicer family than the Ordus's. We have a mutual acquaintance who suggested them to me.
Yes, Almont is 40 Mile and Van Dyke, unofficially. It's about an hour and a half up to Bad Axe, but there's no traffic.

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[[And no traffic lights)

I have always heard the same about Ordus Ford.
Hope that the family continues the business.
RIP George Ordus, he passed away last month.

http://huroncountypress.mihomepaper...._19422010.html

I knew that he had passed. I believe the boys are keeping the business going.

I agree the small town dealership is worth traveling to. I used to take my van up to Marlette Chrysler. In addition to the beautiful drive, the same day reasonably price service was a big treat for me.

As a former resident of the thumb, its pretty cool that Lowell posted some pics of the Owendale-Gagetown-Pigeon area. BTW, that isn't a beet harvester, that is a beet piler to but the harvested beets into pile, but good guess. My Dad worked at one of the sugar factories back in the 70's. Also Eastburn's claim that manure is flowing down a creek into Lake Huron is complete lunacy. That is just silty sediment. Eastburn clearly has no clue about agriculture, just environmentalist talking points. The field tile are buried four feet into the ground, applied manure would never make it that far into the soil profile without the nutrients being used by plants or adsorbed to the heavy clay soil prevalent in the Thumb. Get a clue.

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Originally Posted by DetroitPlanner

How bout when you get a nice nor' Easterner come wintertime?? :confused::eek:

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Dealt with that for the 1st 4 years we lived here. It beat us up. Bought a winter place in Florida. Best of both worlds.

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Originally Posted by schulzte

As a former resident of the thumb, its pretty cool that Lowell posted some pics of the Owendale-Gagetown-Pigeon area. BTW, that isn't a beet harvester, that is a beet piler to but the harvested beets into pile, but good guess. My Dad worked at one of the sugar factories back in the 70's. Also Eastburn's claim that manure is flowing down a creek into Lake Huron is complete lunacy. That is just silty sediment. Eastburn clearly has no clue about agriculture, just environmentalist talking points. The field tile are buried four feet into the ground, applied manure would never make it that far into the soil profile without the nutrients being used by plants or adsorbed to the heavy clay soil prevalent in the Thumb. Get a clue.

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Come to the lake shore some time & take a sniff. Recent DEQ studies have shown that the 2 largest contributors to the shoreline muck are agricultural runoff and failing septic systems.

Thanks for the correction Schulzte. I have amended my text accordingly. It makes more sense. It was beggaring my imagination as to how that thing could be motored across the fields. Ages ago I worked at a pea vining station in Wisconsin for the Green Giant company. Truckloads of pea vines were delivered to them for threshing. Eventually those stationary contraptions, close to the size of the pilers above, were motorized into huge reapers and vining and threshing all happened in the fields. Hence my mistaken guess.

As for the manure going in the rivers, I seriously doubt that too. However the runoff from chemical fertilizers and insecticides is a problem, for the watershed, the workers who apply them and the people who live nearby.

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Originally Posted by schulzte

As a former resident of the thumb, its pretty cool that Lowell posted some pics of the Owendale-Gagetown-Pigeon area. BTW, that isn't a beet harvester, that is a beet piler to but the harvested beets into pile, but good guess. My Dad worked at one of the sugar factories back in the 70's. Also Eastburn's claim that manure is flowing down a creek into Lake Huron is complete lunacy. That is just silty sediment. Eastburn clearly has no clue about agriculture, just environmentalist talking points. The field tile are buried four feet into the ground, applied manure would never make it that far into the soil profile without the nutrients being used by plants or adsorbed to the heavy clay soil prevalent in the Thumb. Get a clue.

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schultze, i'm afraid it is you who is clueless. the beaches between Oak Beach and Sleeper State Park have been ruined for about a decade and a half. beachfront property owners pointed to the farms, and the farmers who run Hume Twp dismissed them. studies by college students traced the problems to animal waste, and the farmers who run things there dismissed them. then the DEQ finally got involved and traced the problem to farm runoff and the farmers still did not acknowledge blame. too late for beachgoers who endured a decade of thick green muck where clear water and sand once were. but the farmers run the politics there and reap the benefits of the massively taxed beach properties, as they always have.

"Michigan, my Michigan..."

Beautiful pictures and commentary, Lowell. Reminds me of a time when every crossroads seemed to have a general store with a couple of Imperial Gas pumps out front.

It reminded me a lot of drives we take through Eastern Washington, where some of the old wheat towns hold on by their fingernails.....

http://www.harringtonbiz.com/Business-Recruitment.html

and some whose nails broke long ago.

Thanks for the memories of the Thumb. For quite a few years I would celebrate Mother's Day by taking my mom out for a drive on M-25 going all the way around the thumb, and we always made a point of stopping at some of the parks, especially Lighthouse and Jenks. Too bad about those beaches - walking the beach at Jenks and skipping stones was one of our favorite highlights of the trip. We would always culminate the trip with an all you can eat Frankenmuth chicken dinner. I also remember seeing or at least passing by road signs pointing to many of the other towns mentioned in some of the earlier posts.

Sigh, the only thing worse than the state we have left our urban places, is what we have done to the countryside, and the natural lands and forests.

An ecosystem is a system of check and balances that allows the existence of the human habitat [[city, town, farming village). How we ever thought everything was human habitat and nothing must be maintained for the stability of the system, is something a future civilization would probably be very puzzled by.

In a drive through the Thumb you see many things but not everything. The small towns run the gamut; some have figured out how to do well, while others wither on the vine.

There are still plenty of family farms, but long-standing government policies favor what we might call corporate agriculture. But many, many of our communities [[I'm a thumber) have weekly farmers' markets all summer where we can buy locally-grown produce, and my year's supply of meat comes from the annual St. Clair County 4-H auction, so I know exactly where my pork comes from: what pig, who raised her, and where. There are two active farmers and one retired farmer among the nine people on my Township's planning commission. We have tried, despite Michigan laws, to institute anti-sprawl policies [[with mixed success).

My chickens have the run of the place, and though the coyotes take some of them, the rest of them are giving me pretty-close-to-organic eggs much of the year. [[I can't be truly organic, since my neighbor who raises soy and corn uses pesticides, and I can't help but that some of it blows onto my land.)

Still, I can't help but remember the small business owners in and near Grindstone City a good fifteen years ago, telling me at a barber shop exactly why the area was going to Hell in a handbasket. "Yep," one of the elderly customers said in a weird nothern drawl, "things ain't been the same around here since they built the Wal Mart in Bad Axe."

So our beautiful thumb combines the traditional with the new, and has its ups and downs, its thriving communities and its struggling ones, its good and not-so-good schools. We manage without a four-year college or university anywhere in sight, and the farmers join the environmentalists in our up-and-coming Watershed Management Councils [[your Prof is a founding member of one such) to figure out exactly how to manage all the poop.

So like everywhere else on Earth, it kind of works and it kind of doesn't, and some do well and some do not. But we manage. Come visit! Tell 'em Professor Scott sent ya. Lowell, next time you come up this way, let me know and lunch is on me.

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Originally Posted by professorscott

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. But many, many of our communities [[I'm a thumber) have weekly farmers' markets all summer where we can buy locally-grown produce,

Still, I can't help but remember the small business owners in and near Grindstone City a good fifteen years ago, telling me at a barber shop exactly why the area was going to Hell in a handbasket. "Yep," one of the elderly customers said in a weird nothern drawl, "things ain't been the same around here since they built the Wal Mart in Bad Axe."
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I adore the Farmers market in P.A. I am a die hard fan of the Tamales at one of the stands and if I am just going up for the weekend I make sure to drive up friday night to make sure I am in town nice and early so as not to miss out:D


I have heard several local people express the same thoughts about wally world. Not sure how true it is though as most of the business I remember from my childhood are still around so its not like they put many competitors out of business. Maybe its just that the small town vibe gets lost behind the mega store :confused:

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Originally Posted by professorscott

In a drive through the Thumb you see many things but not everything. The small towns run the gamut; some have figured out how to do well, while others wither on the vine.

There are still plenty of family farms, but long-standing government policies favor what we might call corporate agriculture. But many, many of our communities [[I'm a thumber) have weekly farmers' markets all summer where we can buy locally-grown produce, and my year's supply of meat comes from the annual St. Clair County 4-H auction, so I know exactly where my pork comes from: what pig, who raised her, and where. There are two active farmers and one retired farmer among the nine people on my Township's planning commission. We have tried, despite Michigan laws, to institute anti-sprawl policies [[with mixed success).

My chickens have the run of the place, and though the coyotes take some of them, the rest of them are giving me pretty-close-to-organic eggs much of the year. [[I can't be truly organic, since my neighbor who raises soy and corn uses pesticides, and I can't help but that some of it blows onto my land.)

Still, I can't help but remember the small business owners in and near Grindstone City a good fifteen years ago, telling me at a barber shop exactly why the area was going to Hell in a handbasket. "Yep," one of the elderly customers said in a weird nothern drawl, "things ain't been the same around here since they built the Wal Mart in Bad Axe."

So our beautiful thumb combines the traditional with the new, and has its ups and downs, its thriving communities and its struggling ones, its good and not-so-good schools. We manage without a four-year college or university anywhere in sight, and the farmers join the environmentalists in our up-and-coming Watershed Management Councils [[your Prof is a founding member of one such) to figure out exactly how to manage all the poop.

So like everywhere else on Earth, it kind of works and it kind of doesn't, and some do well and some do not. But we manage. Come visit! Tell 'em Professor Scott sent ya. Lowell, next time you come up this way, let me know and lunch is on me.

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A great perspective Professor. Maybe we just see the grand ruins of the past, both in the real world and in our minds, and imagine a past that was much better than it ever really was.

I guess I really just don't know. :o

My mother-in-law has summered in Caseville for a couple of decades so I have found my way there many times over the years. Whenever time permitted, sometimes when it didn't, I deliberately choose to take a different route, to and from, using my Delorme Atlas and now google GPS maps on the iPhone to find backroads and small towns.

I find the flat-as-far-as-you-can-see landscapes hauntingly beautiful. They allow one to see for great distances. The towns are charming for their successes and failures. It is very pleasant for cruising and the eyes can wander as little attention is required. Traffic is rare, the roads straight as arrows, well maintained and often paved. It is like the flat prairies of central Illinois. The scariest thing are the often 10-15 foot deep drainage canals that run beside most roads.

BTW, I was the the farmer's market in Port Austin. It was wonderful and the selections great and varied. Smoked fish, fresh Amish baked goods, local honey and vegetables and more.

The 'Cheeseburger Festival' was at full throttle in Caseville. The last time I was there when it was being held it was in its second year and was a modest gathering of townies, farmers, summer residents and tourists. Oh how that is changed. It now resembles a Fort Lauderdale spring break as throngs of college-agers pack overflowing sidewalks and the beach. Several thousand now visit this Jimmy Buffet-flavored event with entertainment stages and countless events.

Something to remember, without those big productive farms to the north, large cities like Detroit wouldn't be possible. Commercial farming is what makes big cities possible. If everything were grown organic, half of us would still be farming, most of whom would be poor and unable to pursue other professions. My grandfather who farmed back to the twenties would often say "the good old days weren't so good"

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Originally Posted by schulzte

Something to remember, without those big productive farms to the north, large cities like Detroit wouldn't be possible. Commercial farming is what makes big cities possible.

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From the Detroit Free Press, Tues. Nov. 16, 1869: “Exhilarating - a walk out on the Gratiot road in the morning and meeting a hundred loads of wood and fifty tons of hay coming to market, gives a grand idea of the great city and its powers of consumption.”

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Originally Posted by schulzte

Something to remember, without those big productive farms to the north, large cities like Detroit wouldn't be possible.

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Not sure about the time frame, but remember that Detroit and the 'burbs didn't always sprawl so far. There's a big house on Greenfield between Midland and Pilgrim that used to own much of the area as a farm. Most of Farmington and Northville used to be very rural.

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Not sure about the time frame, but remember that Detroit and the 'burbs didn't always sprawl so far.

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Back in 1869, where was all that wood and hay on the "Gratiot road" coming from? Warren Township, Clinton Township, maybe from even as far away as Chesterfield and Lenox Townships, but that would have meant an all-night wagon ride on rutted roads to get to Detroit. You can be sure that similar loads were also coming to market along the Woodward road, the Grand River road and the Michigan road from the outer reaches of Oakland and Wayne Counties.

Who was cutting all that wood and hay?

They were hard-working folks who lived in rural, semi-rural and incorporated areas of Wayne, Oakland and Macomb counties. They lived, farmed and worked outside the Detroit city limits, relying on the "the great city and it's power of consumption" for their financial success and also to purchase the extras for their household that they couldn't grow or make by themselves or locally.

At this time, the Thumb area was the source of millions of board feet of white pine each year. However, the devastating forest fires of Oct. 1871 opened up large areas of land for farming. Over the next ten years, many of the small farmers in Wayne, Oakland and Macomb Counties bought large parcels of land in the Thumb and moved lock, stock and barrel to stake their future in the north. The railroads began hauling their agricultural products to market as the Thumb's lumbering industry collapsed. The Great Thumb Fire of 1881 devastated a million or so acres but forever changed the Thumb into the great agricultural region that remains to this day.

"As for the manure going in the rivers, I seriously doubt that too. However the runoff from chemical fertilizers and insecticides is a problem, for the watershed, the workers who apply them and the people who live nearby."

I can't believe that anyone still believes that CAFOs aren't largely responsible for the massive increases in pollution of Michigan inland rivers and streams, which flow to the Great Lakes. This effect has been well documented on the No CAFOs web site. Why does anyone believe that this is happening in southern Michigan but not the Thumb?

http://nocafos.org/tiledischarges.htm

Did you discover an small wooden schoolhouses? I used to explore them when I lived in Lapeer County, some still had desks and chalkboards intact.....

A good way to get a look at life in the thumb in the late 19th century is to check out Huron City, just off M25 between Pt. Austin & Pt. Hope. http://huroncitymuseums.org/ You can tour the buildings by appointment on weekends. The town & its surroundings are still owned by descendants of the founder, Langdon Hubbard. Huron City was the major sawmill and lumber transshipment area in the northern thumb. A 1/2 mile long pier ran out into Lake Huron from there. Michigan's Poet Laureate, Edgar A. Guest, spent a great deal of time in Huron City.

Good thread Lowell, You gave me some vacation ideas.

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Originally Posted by Eastburn

"Today they stand as obsolete reminders of when dairy farming was common."

Dairy farming is still big business in the Thumb. They're called CAFOs [[combined animal feeding operations). Often thousands of dairy cows in pole building sheds. They never get outside and live an average of 4 - 5 years. The resulting manure is spread on the fields which are tiled, carrying it into the drains, streams & rivers thence into Saginaw Bay and Lake Huron. Take a look at Willow Creek [[Huron City) on Google Earth as it empties into Lake Huron. Looks like a toilet flushing.

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And yet people think that bringing the farm to the city is a great idea.

http://modeldmedia.com/features/hantzfarm082410.aspx

I don't think every town needs to be a success, and it's hard to call the towns that are not successes failures. Evolution happens and it always will. Some towns will eventually be wiped off the map. That's not really sad, it's just shifting winds. I ride my bike through countless country landscapes here in Georgia, and the same thing exists, everywhere. These towns have never really thrived over the last 50 years or so, and maybe they have never thrived at all, but we all want to think they once did.

I like this picture set for it's reality, but I don't see it reflecting back to a 'better' day. One day down the road, someone might be taking a picture of a rusted out, broken down wind mill, wondering what it was like to have such primitive means of energy gathering. We see what we want to see.

Wonderfull and beautiful pics. Lowell.. Always give me so much enjoyment..Thank you..

About 35 years ago I did a paper on the relationship between clay deposits [[and brick making) and the building of these bicolor homes in the thumb. I have visited occasionally and watched these homes disappear. You can drive along any mile road or half mile road and every quarter mile you will find a driveway crossing a ditch and maybe a barn repaired and standing without any home next to it. The 40 acre plots were gobbled up into 200-800 acre farms and the houses were left to rot or torn down. I came across this house, which was also vacant a couple summers ago. A blue clay produced the buff colored brick and a red clay produced the red brick. Over most of the thumb the deposits are on top of each other close to the surface. Which ever deposit dominated became the dominant color with the other color used for ornamentation. There were lots of these homes some very modest, some quite large. Here's the pics. I hope they come out OK.

great photo essay. nice work!

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Originally Posted by Zimm

Lowell, if you'd continued north on Pinnebog road after you shot the pic of the general store ruins, you would have seen lots of cows-there's a large dairy farm on the right hand side about 1/4 mile north of the Pinnebog Road/Kinde Road intersection.

I used to love the general store ruins, but it seems they've finally begun to collapse in the 5 or so years since I stopped traveling that way as a cutoff to my family's former cottage up at Oak Beach.

the next time i find $20 in gas money burning a hole in my pocket, i should take a drive up there. 30 years of driving through the thumb always made me sad to see the pockets of poverty and decay. in the fall, i'd feel doubly wistful, although passing by a sugar beet factory at harvest time was always an incredible sight. i've never seen piles of anything so massive!

next time you're up there, you'd probably appreciate the old grindstone factory in Grindstone City, as well as a fantastically intact old storefront oddly placed [[a beautiful urban storefront in the middle of nowhere-as if there was a city around it that vanished) on the SW corner of Copeland and Rouse in Grindstone City. be sure to stop off for a giant yet amazingly cheap cone of Stroh's ice cream at the General Store on Copeland.

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We just got back from our first visit to Caseville and made the trip East on M-25 to find the the Grindstone General Store. Amazing! Vernors, Better Made chips, Stroh's ice cream, like three of the biggest scoops I've ever seen for $3. I asked the clerk where we could actually walk "in town" in Grindstone, and she looked at me strange, and said, "you're in it." Your description is right on, and that urban storefront is something to see. It is for sale...I'll try to post the pictures I took of it.

We ate at a restaurant in Port Austin called The Bank 1884. Beautiful building and cool atmosphere. Very "urban" for a small town.

I knew there was a Scoth/Irish history there, but was struck by the Catholic churches and names of the towns, roads, rivers, up that way. So relatively close to Detroit, also.

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Originally Posted by bartock

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We just got back from our first visit to Caseville and made the trip East on M-25 to find the the Grindstone General Store. Amazing! Vernors, Better Made chips, Stroh's ice cream, like three of the biggest scoops I've ever seen for $3. I asked the clerk where we could actually walk "in town" in Grindstone, and she looked at me strange, and said, "you're in it." Your description is right on, and that urban storefront is something to see. It is for sale...I'll try to post the pictures I took of it.

We ate at a restaurant in Port Austin called The Bank 1884. Beautiful building and cool atmosphere. Very "urban" for a small town.

I knew there was a Scoth/Irish history there, but was struck by the Catholic churches and names of the towns, roads, rivers, up that way. So relatively close to Detroit, also.

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best ice cream cones in the state!

i'd love to see your pics of the old storefront. last i saw, the upper floor looked to be occupied by low-end renters. i'd love to pick that building up and move it somewhere great [[but then i suppose it would lose some of the oddness that makes it so great in my mind. the location seems at best a bit of land speculation failure and at worst an architect/builder's failure to properly address location in the design process.

i remember when The Bank first opened-noteworthy because it was by reputation an excellent restaurant and intriguing atmosphere in a region completely devoid of even decent restaurants and more importantly, of people who could cook worth a dam. i remember locals turning us on to great new "restaurants" that were little more than someone who could cook a bit setting up tables in their own home on some sparsely populated side road.

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best ice cream cones in the state!

I'd love to see your pics of the old storefront. Last i saw, the upper floor looked to be occupied by low-end renters. I'd love to pick that building up and move it somewhere great [[but then i suppose it would lose some of the oddness that makes it so great in my mind. The location seems at best a bit of land speculation failure and at worst an architect/builder's failure to properly address location in the design process.

I remember when the bank first opened-noteworthy because it was by reputation an excellent restaurant and intriguing atmosphere in a region completely devoid of even decent restaurants and more importantly, of people who could cook worth a dam. I remember locals turning us on to great new "restaurants" that were little more than someone who could cook a bit setting up tables in their own home on some sparsely populated side road.

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I've lost my attachment virginity.

First and third pictures are obviously the general store, and the second picture is that building...wish I would have taken more pictures of it, and of that bank place.

The fourth is the for sale sign regarding that building. I think you can see the number.

Just found this on my iPhone... The above mentioned The Bank in Port Austin.

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I've lost my attachment virginity.

First and third pictures are obviously the general store, and the second picture is that building...wish I would have taken more pictures of it, and of that bank place.

The fourth is the for sale sign regarding that building. I think you can see the number.

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great pics bartock! glad to see things are as i left them.:)

Great pix and essay, Lowell! Thank you for sharing...

Also enjoyed poop-in-creeks [["kriks" in Thumbese) subthread... old memories... swimmin' in da krik...neighbors' farms drained into it, we dint care ... peesa manure [[cowsh*t + straw) float by...jus' push it outa da way...good clean livin, down by da krik.

K-4 at neighborhood one-room schoolhouse - stove in da corner, two privies [[2-holers) pulled up against the building so we had "indoor bathrooms". Every month, we painted new pix on the windows - took half a day to get it right...gawd whatta lotta love we had ... Attended the funeral of my K-4 teacher in June at da famly church, looked down from da balkeny - seven heads in a row - they turned round afterward and hollered "Hiiiiii!!" So good to catch up on de old daze over "funeral lunch"...still lotta love there...

Thumb has nice beaches, great people, and...yes...good food if you know where to find it. Visited family, attended school reunion ...did the M-25 drive thru the beachside towns [[PH, Lakeport, Lexington, Port Sanilac, Forester, Forestville, HB, Port Hope, Gstone, Port Austin, Caseville, Bay Port...) ... sweet memories... years ago some of those towns were shabby...now tarted up, ready for tourists... I hope they survive.

Learned to swim at Lighthouse Park - Mom & I would drive up there in the afternoon - Mom sat in the shadow of the bluff and read, I piddled in the lake... sand gone now, washed out when the water was high. Was nice to walk the old wharf... sigh...

Not to mention Detroit's longest named street goes all the way up to the Thumb. 117 miles from East Jefferson to Port Austin; Detroit River to Lake Huron.

I'm glad I saw this thread. I drove around the thumb this week. Next time I will visit the middle of the thumb as the wife wants to see the octagon barn and the wind towers. Thanks for the thread Lowell.