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July
27, 1911 first flight in Midwest in this town.
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JE
Bean and Fred Selk managed a drygoods store and sold candy.
Their customers got mad about kids taking up their time
selling candy, so they invented the first vending machine in
June 1889. It also dispensed 5 and 10-cent cigars.
Others later patented it somewhere else years later.
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Mrs.
Evelyn Bedore, a local resident in her 90’s, was the first
woman truck driver in Ashland County. She drove a gravel
dump truck in the early 1920’s.
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Green
granite near Wakefield, near Holiday, is some of the oldest in
the world, left there from the glaciers.
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Mellen
black granite was used on Kennedy’s eternal flame gravesite
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When
a miner died in a mining accident, the only compensation was
$23.00 and a ham to the widow.
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Behind
Pioneer Park in 1890, the cave-in made a big sink.
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Chet
Enson was a young man who worked for White Pine and sunk many of
drilling holes we still see in the area today.
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In
1920-21 Ironwood’s population alone was 19,000 people.
Now, that’s the size of the entire county population.
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You
could tell which side of the tracks you were from by the way you
sliced your bread; in half or diagonal.
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There
was a Copper mine just above the Superior Dam at one time.
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Saxon
was originally known as Ironton .
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There
was an Indian burial ground near the Oronto River, named after
Chief Oronto who was buried there along shores of Lake Superior.
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In
1887 there were over 337 registered mining sites in Gogebic
Range. The land was
just perforated with holes from exploration.
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Many
people led a “light switch” type of life where it was boom
or bust, on and off.
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Panic
of 1887 in the Iron market caused a very depressed market.
Wildcat mines lost millions of dollars on speculation.
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In
1770 the Alexander mine brought over Cornish miners from
England. Many of
our hard-core workers and bosses were from Europe.
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The
lumbering of pine happened first in our region. They left
the hardwoods standing then, after the land was cutover, they
went back for the hardwoods.
The UP was a region where it was said it would take
10,000 men 10,000 years to clear it, and logging had nearly
wiped out every tree by 1907-1908.
Ironwood landscape looked lunar at the time.
And where did all the timber go, you might ask?
It’s all underground, all used as bracing to hold up
mine tunnels. If
they were not used, the stoops would cave in.
It was used in mining days quite often to shore up the
mining shafts.
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“Molly
Cooper entertainment centers” were actually brothels.
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Did
you know that Howard Hughes special “Spruce Goose” planes
were actually made of spruce from our local forests?
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Unwise
logging practices of leaving deadheads from trees caused great
fires in Mercer in the 1920’s and many resorts burned.
That’s why there are so many fire lanes (towers) left in Iron
County.
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James
Arthur O’Neil was a man ahead of his times. Many people
said they could draw the Memorial Building; he’s the one that
said he’d show it to them by building it.
It is said that at the top of the stairs of the Memorial
building an alcove was built to have a bust of O’Neil.
It was commissioned to be done from some sculptor in Europe, but
was either never shipped or made and no one knows what became of
the order.
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Local
people were very patriotic. In WW1 over 2200 local men
signed up and fought. That was a good percentage of
the people.
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Did
you know that Freddie’s Salon was built in 1927 and was so
strong that in 1940’s it was declared a bomb shelter?
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Our
range has a fair share of military displays.
Of the three cannons, one was given to Ironwood and when
the war needed metal, we donated the cannon back to be melted
and used in the war.
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Mr.
Luther L. Wright was a key educator in Ironwood.
He went on to be on the State Board of Education and
became a real leader in education.
He came to Ironwood in 1887 when Ironwood had just dirt
paths instead of roads. There
were oversized paths and a railroad, which were the only real
artery's and lifelines.
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The
original Central School was built in 1887. It burned to
the ground in 1913 and the new Central School was built in 1914.
Luther L. Wright High School was built in 1925 for nearly
one million dollars. It
was considered an extravagant building that was very forward
thinking.
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“Indian
Ted” had a trapping cabin near Chaney Lake.
Ted Elliason, a logger, was a real character. He stoked
the Plymouth mine with a shovel; he’d even stoke steam shovels
at the same time. He
was a very strong man. Strong minded, too.
April 19, 1940 he bowled over 101 consecutive games in
less than 9 hours and was listed in the Guinness Book of World
Records. His
bowling strength earned him a world-class record.
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The
Merchant’s Miners bank was built in 1913. It was the
former Diamond Shop building, which now houses Mulligan's Coffee
shop.
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There
were two huge bank scandals in the area; the most notable one
was at the Iron Exchange in 1885.
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Hurley
Tavern lists in the business directories showed that in 1947
there were 102 bars. Before the Club Carnival, many
bars had 2 in one building; one on the main floor, and the upper
one was like a speak easy.(See area business directories in
Ironwood and Wakefield historical societies).
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Chiapuzio’s
were all busy making moonshine during the prohibition times.
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Melba
Stope, “Wheels from Hell” was murdered in 1946 across from
the Hospital.
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In
the 1880’s there was “media warfare” with newspapers
slandering each other without a care.
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In
1966 the Peterson mine closed. “Skelly”, Larry Peterson’s
dad, worked on the last shift.
(Larry Peterson is an area historian)
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The
White Bear saloon was located in the middle of Hurley.
It was a hell-raising bar.
Old
Depot Museum
150 North Lowell
PO Box 45
Ironwood, MI. 49938
906/932-1122 (phone)
906/932-2756 (fax)
email: chamber@ironwoodmi.org
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