Operator of a logging machine in Pere Marquette State Forest.
Story and photos by Stewart A. McFerran
Pinus strobus grows tall and straight and covered the region at one time. The forests of old would have been something to behold, having grown for tens of thousands of years following the last period of receding glaciers.
The eastern white pine, Michigan’s state tree, is still cut for lumber. Crews of lumberjacks and teams of sawyers once toiled in the state’s forests but, like pinus strobus, they are less common now.
The machines venturing into the woods these days bring to mind the movie “Transformers”. The articulated apparatus at the end of a hydraulic crane grapples the tree trunk, cuts it and lays it down. Powerful steel rollers then pull the tree trunk through, removing the branches. As the “roundwood” is laid down on what used to be a forest floor, it is measured.
The operator is enclosed in a cage with controls at the fingertips. Another vehicle trundles up and over the downed wood, grapples the trunks and loads them onto a bunk in the back. It is then carried to a staging area where it is stacked and ready for transport to the mill.
Materials Science operates at the intersection of Chemistry, Physics and Engineering, knowledge that guides the wood products’ industry today. There is a big place for the fibers of Michigan trees.
Arauco, a Chilean lumber company, recently built a $400 million plant in Grayling. It is a single line press to produce particle board, moldings and a range of other products in many colors. They are up and running and buying round wood, wood chips and sawdust from mills and log crews in the Lower Peninsula of Michigan.
Northern Logger reported that four of the largest buyers of softwood in the state went out of business a decade ago: Menasha Paper, Georgia Pacific, Sappi Paper Mill and St. Mary’s Paper. In their absence, Arauco is now buying up large amounts of wood fibers in the forested areas of Michigan. The company has a wide range of products available at Home Depot.
There are a few small mills in the region. Small, that is, compared to the giant operations of companies such as Arauco.
Housler Lumber in Mesick founded a sawmill in 1942 and is still family owned. The lumber is harvested within a 100-mile radius. The third-generation loggers use responsible forestry practices. They offer kiln-dried hardwoods for flooring and custom trim at the retail location in Mesick.
In Benzie County, Lake Ann Hardwoods produces over one million board feet of lumber a year for furniture, construction and shipping.
John Gussler operates a mill in Oscoda County, in the shadow of Arauco. His Fairview Sawmill is surrounded by the Huron National Forest. He bought Tiger equipment to harvest the trees he needs to keep the blades spinning at his mill.
Closer to home, some Lake County mills include Jerome Miller Lumber Company of Baldwin, which saws hardwoods and poplar, and Wheelers Wolf Lake Sawmill, north of Baldwin.
Mason County’s McCormick Sawmill, in Fountain, produced about six million board feet of lumber each year before the facility burned down. Twenty people lost their jobs when the mill went up in flames. J.W. McCormick said the McCormick family sold the mill to Kamps Hardwoods, owned by Buskirk Sawmill, prior to the fire.
“He (Paul Kamp) owns pallet operations, lumber drying facilities and the Freeport (Buskirk) sawmill,” McCormick said. “… I still work for the McCormick mill, but the location is vacant right now, waiting for the decision if it is going to get rebuilt.”
McCormick said when his family owned the mill, he “did a little bit of everything.” Now his duties include buying timber from private landowners and using log crews to get the wood to the sawmill.
“All of our logs come in (and) they get sorted by quality,” he explained. “You’ve got your veneer, you’ve got grade and then you’ve got your crane mat or pallet material. Bark goes to landscaping companies.”
McCormick even sold its sawdust to Mycopia, a Scottville company that grows specialty mushrooms. The sterilized sawdust is used as a growing medium.
“Well over 90% of our volume comes from private” land and the standing timber is “mainly hard maple and red oak around here,” according to McCormick, whereas Arauco buys softwood from stands of timber growing on state and national forest lands.
Teams of horses and oxen once delivered pinus strobus logs to mills powered by falling water. Tom Schneider writes about his great-grandfather’s mill on Chief Creek in “The Wellspring,” a project of Onekama Middle School students published by the Manistee County Historical Society. Casper Schneider determined that the creek could produce 6 h.p. but, if water were stored in the dam, he could produce 18 h.p. for eight hours while releasing pent-up water.
Many such mills dotted the landscape of Manistee County and beyond. However, it was found these “muley” saws that moved up and down just didn’t have the power needed to increase production. The joke was that saws of the muley make “moved up one day and down the next.”
I can understand how Casper felt there was an unlimited supply of white pine while operating his waterwheel mill, whereas the CEO of the Arauco mill may have a different view.
Stewart A. McFerran illuminates current environmental issues in an historic context. He hopes readers will gain understanding and insight into ways people interact with their environment. He is our Freshwater Reporter Ambassador-At-Large
