There are some animals that astound us by their oddity: the “duck-billed” platypus because it lays eggs, the sea horse because the male broods the young, the ant lion because it digs pits that entrap ants. Tardigrades beat them all, different in so many respects scientists scarcely know where to fit them in on the evolutionary family tree.They are like aliens, come from another galaxy far away.
Image courtesy of Schokraie E, Warnken U, Hotz-Wagenblatt A, Grohme MA, Hengherr S, et al. (2012) – Schokraie E, Warnken U, Hotz-Wagenblatt A, Grohme MA, Hengherr S, et al. (2012) Comparative proteome analysis of Milnesium tardigradum in early embryonic state versus adults in active and anhydrobiotic state. PLoS ONE 7(9): e45682. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0045682, CC BY 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=22716809
Sometimes called water bears, they lumber about on eight clawed legs, looking ungainly and a bit loveable with their antics.Possessing odd mouthparts with sharp stylets that pierce the plants upon which they feed, they suck out cell contents as if with a straw.Did I mention that they love mosses and lichens—and that they require a microscope to be seen?
I have encountered them twice in my career.First, long ago, I took a course in mosses.Upon immersing those organisms in water to rehydrate them, tardigrades associated with them spring back to life, too: like instant coffee, you just add water to get the thing you want (in this case, a living being).
The other time I saw them was at the beach when I would dig holes near the water’s edge and watch them fill up with water.Upon examining that water under the microscope, I discovered enormous numbers of water bears.My research tells me that, in addition to mosses, they eat algae and one-cell creatures, too.If they can be found among the grains of sand at a beach, no doubt they can be found in many other unsuspected places all around us.
Image provided by Willow Gabriel, Goldstein Lab – https://www.flickr.com/photos/waterbears/1614095719/ Template:Uploader Transferred from en.wikipedia to Commons., CC BY-SA 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2261992
Besides being cute, tardigrades are known for their resilience.They can be dehydrated and pop back to life after years in dormancy; they can be frozen to absolute zero, the temperature of outer space, and resume their normal lives without an iota of stress or worry; they can be boiled, scarcely feeling the heat.In short, they appear to be super-animals.
If you wish to see water bears, do what I did: rinse a clump of moss with water, allow the washing water to settle and then use a medicine dropper to suck up some debris.Surely, through your microscope you will see the creatures lumbering about in search of food or a mate.If you do not wish to take the trouble to corral your own animals, you may visit this web site to study them second-hand:
Congratulations to Frederick Ide who correctly located the plaque honoring John T. Parsons in front of Cone Drive on East 11th Street–on the very last day of the month! In the future the Grand Traverse Journal would like to carry a story about Parsons and his remarkable accomplishments. Would you care to author it?
From the Traverse City Record-Eagle, January 26, 1952
The golden age of radio went from the 1920’s to the 1950’s, at which time television began to erode its popularity. Scripted stories were read by famous actors, many with reputations from movies and the theater. Quiz shows, operas, action drama, straight theater, popular music, and comedy could be found on the four main radio networks on Sunday afternoons and evenings. Audiences looked forward to Jack Benny, Amos ‘n Andy, and Charlie McCarthy on CBS, as solid a line-up as any offered on television today. Those of us who can remember those days feel a bit of nostalgia in seeing those names from the past.
Ferris Glass at the Brown Bridge Dam, prior to demolition in 2012. Image provided by Mr. Glass.
Ferris Glass was four years old in 1924 when his family moved into the house on the bank next to the Brown Bridge dam. The earthen dam had just been built to provide electric power for Traverse City, its backwaters forming Brown Bridge pond. His father was employed by the City of Traverse City to operate the dam, a job that was not without risk: Just ten years before, a dam operator in Mayfield had drowned when the earthen dam had washed out after a heavy rain.Twenty-four years before that, the earthen dam above Johnstown Pennsylvania had been swept away, killing 2,209, a record number of deaths for a weather-related event in the United States at the time.
Image provided by the author, May 2016.
I recently talked with Mr. Glass at his home in East Bay Township. Judging from the piles of newspaper clippings on his kitchen table, he has been following developments on the Boardman River ever since the early days. The most recent flurry of activity, the washout associated with the removal of the Brown Bridge dam, has been of particular interest to Mr. Glass. The current removal of the earthen dam on Cass Road (known as the Boardman Dam) has not escaped his notice, either.
His memories of the early years tell us of the duties of a dam operator.One of them was to watch the big dial on the wall of the powerhouse that indicated electrical output. Ferris helped his dad make sure the one hand on the dial pointed up, that signaling optimum current flow. After a heavy rain, the Brown Bridge Pond rose, allowing more water to enter the spillway, causing the generators to turn faster. With dry weather, the pond fell, slowing the generators. By opening or closing the water gates, the operator could rectify the electric power and keep all of Traverse City’s electric clocks on time.
For his childhood and beyond, the Brown Bridge dam was Ferris’s playground. He climbed all over the powerhouse and helped his dad when logs floated down and struck the dam. At the time the Brown Bridge dam was built, the powerhouse had two electric generators.Later, when he was fifteen, Ferris watched as a new water wheel was installed. The new design increased the amount of power generated, but even with that increase, the Brown Bridge dam could not keep up with demand.
EARTHEN DAMS OF THE BOARDMAN AND MUSKEGON: DANGEROUS VENTURES
“Road bridge north of power plant”, Mayfield Dam Washout, 24 March 1913. Image courtesy of Tom Olds. Olds’ Historical Postcard Collection has been digitized and is available at localhistory.tadl.org
Early in 1866, George Neal and Lucas Knight built a dam across the Mayfield Creek, its waterpower first used for sawing wood and grinding grain for flour.In keeping with the times, J.D.Gibbs converted it to a hydroelectric plant at a later date, but its future was short and catastrophic as it washed out in 1913, killing dam operator John Hawthorne.
On August 24, 1898 the Boardman River Electric Light & Power Co. dam (now called the Boardman dam at Cass Road) gave way, the subsequent flood sweeping downstream, carrying everything before it. The same rain event triggered enormous damage to private property in Traverse City along the flat through which Mill creek (now called Kids Creek) in the vicinity of North Cedar Street. According to the Morning Record, the residence of Fred Schrader was completely flooded, his family forced to escape through a second story in a boat.
Boardman River near Boardman Dam, after drawdown activities, May 2016. Image provided by the author.
Since the Keystone dam was downstream of the Brown Bridge dam, water levels in the Keystone pond would get low, and the operator of the Keystone Dam would call Ferris’s father to release water from the Brown Bridge pond to fill the Keystone impoundment.It took seven hours for the surge to travel from Brown Bridge Dam through the river to reach Keystone pond. As the Keystone pond rose, the operator could resume producing electric power at normal levels.
The dependence of one dam upon another explains sequential washouts under heavy rains. First, Mayfield creek washed out in a 1961 rainstorm, that washout on the east end of the earthen dam at Mayfield adding to flood waters of the Boardman River and triggering the Keystone dam failure.The community fearing another washout, Elmer’s construction company was contracted to stabilize the earthen dam in Mayfield Park in 1987.
There are 80 earthen dams in the Muskegon River watershed, two of them creating Houghton and Higgins Lakes. In September of 1986 fourteen inches of rain fell within a forty-eight hour period, the deluge swelling the Muskegon River to eleven times its average flow. Operators of the earthen Hardy dam sounded the alarm on September 11th as water washed over the top of the earthen dam and sand squirted out the seams on the concrete spillway. Operator Charles Smith worried that the emergency spillway at the Hardy dam would fail. If it did, a wall of water would rush down the river and destroy Croton dam downstream on the Muskegon.If that had happened, river communities in Newaygo County would have been wiped out and the level of Muskegon Lake would have risen by twenty-two feet (Alexander, The Muskegon). As with the Mayfield and Keystone dams, one failure leads to the next.
LESSONS LEARNED ABOUT DAM CONSTRUCTION
Earthen dyke for river at Boardman Dam, above where the new bridge is being constructed, May 2016. Image provided by the author.
The flood that wiped out Johnstown and killed 2,209 people taught dam builders important lessons.One of them was the importance of a core wall, a sturdy concrete or rock center to the structure. Proving that Brown Bridge followed modern dam construction specifications, Ferris Glass can show pictures of the core wall that stabilized the Brown Bridge dam as it was being built in 1921.
There was no loss of life when Brown Bridge dam was removed in 2012—or, for that matter, during the entire 92 years it held back the waters of the Boardman River. The normal headwater elevation of the Brown Bridge Reservoir was 796.7 feet, about two hundred feet above the Grand Traverse Bay. By contrast, the dam above Johnstown PA was almost five hundred feet above the town. Watchful dam operators like Ferris Glass’s father explain why washouts of earthen dams on the Boardman above Traverse City did not cause more destruction, though the gentler topography of Northern Michigan may have had more to do with it.
As we were talking, Glass repeated several times that the Army Corps of Engineers is afraid of earthen dams, that fear perhaps deriving from the disaster at Johnstown and elsewhere. That is another lesson of Johnstown: Dams are a danger if poorly maintained. That is why the Corps required dams all across the state to be inspected on a regular basis. Based on those inspections, action must be taken to improve deficiencies discovered in the dam–or else it must be removed.
Construction of new bridge at Boardman Dam, directly below the dyke. We believe the channel pictured left is where the river used to flow (the historic channel, before the pond was impounded), May 2016. Image provided by the author.
When Ferris Glass was asked how he felt about the removal of the Brown Bridge Dam he said: “I hated to see it go, but I can understand why [they did it]. It came down to a decision based on money–the cost of repairing the dam could not be offset by the power generated. Back in the 1920s and 30s the power from the Brown Bridge Dam did not meet the demand. Since then the demand for electric power has grown so that the power from the dam on the Boardman River would be just “a drop in the bucket,” “not enough to run the mall.” However, like many residents, Ferris Glass hated to see the Brown Bridge dam go: he saw it as a successful community project that not only produced electric power but also added a beautiful lake for people to enjoy.
Stewart. A. McFerran teaches a class on the Natural History of Michigan Rivers at NMC and is a frequent contributor to the Grand Traverse Journal.
References:
Alexander, Jeff. The Muskegon. Michigan State University Press.
Brown Bridge Dam – Temporary Dewatering Structure, Root Cause Analysis of the October 6, 2012, Failure Incident. Michigan Department of Environmental Quality.
McCullough, David. The Johnstown Flood. Simon and Schuster.
The Morning Record, August 24, 1898
Williams, A.V, editor. Currents of the Boardman. Grand Traverse Historical Society.
Ferris Glass at the Brown Bridge Dam, prior to demolition in 2012. Image provided by Mr. Glass.
This month’s “News from the Societies” features our wonderful neighbor to the north, Leelanau County! Whether you’re looking for a fun exhibit for all ages, or you’re looking to do some hands-on history conservation, June in the “LC” is where it’s at! Special thanks to Stef Staley, Director of Grand Traverse Lighthouse, and Kim Kelderhouse of Port Oneida Community Alliance, for keeping us informed through their newsletters and Facebook pages. You, dear reader, can also stay informed directly at their respective online presences, linked below for your pleasure.
Also, join the newly re-named Traverse Area Historical Society at their first summer picnic! See below for details.
The Lake Michigan Aircraft Carrier Exhibit has been wildly popular for the Grand Traverse Lighthouse, and if you haven’t seen it yet, you are seriously overdue! But, lucky you, the Lighthouse plans to continue the exhibit for the 2016 season (“with key additions,” teases their website). The exhibit features the history of the USS Sable (IX-81) and USS Wolverine (IX-64). Both were converted to freshwater training aircraft carriers, used on the Great Lakes between 1943 and 1945. 20,000 pilots and landing signal officers were qualified on those vessels. There are awesome stories, sweet replicas, and whole myriad of photographs and histories to look at. Don’t wait, get on up there in June!
For hands-on fun, look to the Gravestone Preservation Workshop, hosted by the Port Oneida Community Alliance, in partnership with Cleveland Township, Leelanau County. A number of local cemeteries could use a little help in preserving their headstones, so consider getting trained at this event, and Your Editors will be glad to point you where your expertise is needed!
Blackman School Picnic, 1903. Image courtesy of the Floyd Webster Historical Photograph Collection, Kingsley Branch Library, Kingsley (Mich.)
Join the Traverse Area Historical Society at our first social picnic of the year, at the Civic Center Pavilion on Sunday, June 26, 2016, from 12-4p. The Society is hosting this favorite event of years past, to bring their members together and reminisce about the simpler times. Your presence will make the picnic a success! Please bring your stories and a dish to pass! Place settings and beverages provided.
Mr. Hulkonen was instrumental in assisting regular contributor Stewart A. McFerran with his history on The Saunas of Kaleva. We are indebted to him for sharing his family’s stories.
Arthur Hulkonen served in the United States Army during World War II. Image provided by Karen Hilliard.
Arthur Hulkonen, 93, of Kaleva died on April 25, 2016. He was born in the Upper Penninsula in Nisula, Michigan on April 13, 1923. He was 1 of 12 children born to Henry and Hilda (Juntunen) Hullkonen who immigrated to the United States from Suomussalmi, Finland in the early 1900s.
Art served in the U.S. Army during WWII and was captured during the Battle of the Bulge on 12/19/1944. He spent 5 months as a POW in a labor camp near Dresden, Germany.
After discharge from the army, Art arrived in Kaleva on June 29, 1945 where his older brother was living. He met his wife (Mildred) and was married for 65 years before her death in 2012.
Arthur (right) and Alan Hulkonen, of Kaleva, Michigan. Image courtesy of Stewart A. McFerran, 2016.
Art was a local farmer and businessman. Along with his brother Gunnard they started Kaleva Poultry Farm and Hatchery in 1945 and operated this until 1978. The two brothers grew strawberries from 1945 to 1978 and also, in 1945 they started planting Christmas trees and went on to sell these for 50 years across the country. Art went on to work for International Chemical Company and later Agrico Chemical Company. At that time Kaleva was a central hub for farmers and he operated the local fertilizer plant in Kaleva for 30 years until his retirement in 1985.
Arthur Hulkonen at the Sculpture Tree at the Kaleva Centennial Walkway in Kaleva, MI, September 2015. Image courtesy of Karen Hilliard.
He was an active member of Bethany Lutheran Church in Kaleva since 1945. He was a charter member of the Kaleva Lions Club. He was proud of his Finnish heritage and served on the Finnish Council at Finlandia University in Hancock, Michigan for many years. At the time of his death he was the last Finnish speaking member in the community of Kaleva.
He loved Kaleva and spent 70 years actively involved in his community. In September 2015 the Village of Kaleva and Kaleva Historical Society honored him for his community service and business contributions to Kaleva by placing his name on the Sculpture Tree at the Kaleva Centennial Walkway.
The Bear Club of Kaleva. Image courtesy of Stewart A. McFerran, 2016.
Art was the eternal optimist. He loved jokes and reciting poetry. He had a great appreciation for life and plenty of “Sisu” the Finnish word for perseverance and determination. Being surrounded by his family was his greatest joy. He is survived by his three children, five grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.
[This story was taken from Along Traverse Shores, by M.E.C. Bates and Mary K. Buck, Traverse City: the Herald office, 1891]
We were sitting on Prospect Hill [ed. note: Prospect Hill is located near Glen Arbor on the Homestead Resort property] watching the sun go down, –my friend, the school teacher, and I.
I think in all this Grand Traverse region there is perhaps no finer view than that from Prospect Hill. Before us lay Lake Michigan, its wide blue expanse stretching on and out as far as the eye could see, till it merged into sky at the horizon line, behind which the sun, a glowing ball of molten fire had just dropped, leaving all the west a golden sea. Ten miles or more out but looking as if within rifle shot, lay the Manitous, like emeralds in a crystal setting. Hitherward lie the great waterways for all the craft that seek the Straits from the westward, or the Lake Michigan ports and Chicago from the eastward. Clear and distinct, near at hand, or so far away as to be only ghostly outlines, were the white sails of numerous barks bound up or down. Two great propellers with black plumes streaming from their smoke stacks, saluted each other with short, hoarse whistles, as they passed between the islands and the mainland. Far out, dim murky lines lying against the sky told of other boats bearing their loads of gay summer travelers to the great city “at the head” or to the pleasant resorts beyond the northern horizon.
To the southeast Glen Lake, a mighty mirror set in forest crowned hills, and two smaller lakes reflected as faithfully blue of sky and green of wooded slopes. Thriving farms dotted the shores or hid behind the gaps in the forest walls cut by stalwart arms of the pioneers who here have hewn out for themselves happy homes.
From out Glen Lake issued Crystal River, rightly named, slipping away to the beach of yellow sand on the shores of old Michigan, stopping to coil itself into many shining loops, lingering under arches of fragrant cedar, where in the dim green light, in dark pools of ice cold water, speckled trout hide under ferny banks—out of the shadow into the sun, and then back into the shadows again,–under rustic bridges, past the old red grist mill and so down to the shining sands where the waves lap the shore with musical murmur.
From our lofty perch we looked down on the tops of a ragged fringe of scrub pines and oaks that lay between the sand of the beach and the base of Prospect Hill.
“I do not wonder you love your “home by the silver sea’, so well:” I said. “The half was not told me. This must be the true lotos land, –the land of dreams—the land ‘where it is always afternoon.’ I could stay here forever.”
“But it is not always afternoon,” she said, “nor are the days all halcyon summer days. I could tell you stories of wild storms, of wreck and ruin,–yes of heroic deeds such as you read in books, and that thrill your soul with thoughts of knightly emprise till you sigh for the olden days when men were indeed men, not knowing that there are heroes still whom we meet in our daily walks, only our eyes are dim and we do not know them for the knightly souls they are.”
“So? Perhaps that is true. Tell me a story of your Traverse knights. A bit of romance in this dull work-a-day world will indeed be refreshing.”
She clasped her slender hands across her knees, and looked far out on the misty lake, while a thoughtful light came into her pretty eyes.
“I never sit here as we do this evening, and looking out over the great sand dunes of Sleeping Bear, but I think of one wild Autumn day when the schooner Phelps went ashore on the bar below
“It was a night in late November in 1880. The wind blew in a gale from the southwest, lasing the water into foam, the great rollers coming in with almost two hundred miles of unbroken sweep. The schooner tried to gain the lee of the Manitous, and at the same time shun the sand reefs of Sleeping Bear, where many a good ship has laid her bones. Suddenly the wind shifted to the northwest. The sky was thick with blinding snow and she began to drift at the mercy of the wind. They dropped their anchor but it fouled; they drew it and tried again. This time it caught; the ship swung stern shoreward and bow out, trailing anchor, and drifting slowly toward the sand bar. The great waves pounded against her sides with terrific blows. The deck broke away. The rigging fell over the side, forming a network through which the water seethed and foamed, dashing the broken deck high above the prostrate spars only to fall in the black gulf below. One by one the crew were overcome and perished in the freezing water. Only three were left, crowded on the bow above the mass of wreckage—the mate, the wheelsman and a sailor, a boy of nineteen. They clung to the frail support till the boy, impatient at the situation, crossed the awful chasm, and tried to detach a portion of the floating deck. At first he worked manfully, then slower and slower till he fell freezing on the deck.
“In the blinding storm the day broke,–the hours passed on and it was not till afternoon that the wreck was discovered from the shore. The alarm was given and soon all the inhabitants of the little village of Glen Arbor, a short distance up the beach, were gathered on the shore. Some one ran for a team of stout farm horses and a huge pound net boat, a great, flat-bottomed affair, cumbersome even in mild weather, was moved from the fish houses down by the village. It was a perilous venture, and he who went took his life in his hand, but in an instant a crew had volunteered. Strong hands launched the boat. Through the tremendous surf, half way to the wreck, and they were swamped, and their boat coast back like a child’s toy. They were all ice and chilled to the bone, but soon they launched their boat again, four of the first crew going out, and a slender young fellow with nerves of steel and muscles of iron under his fair skin took the stern oar in place of the fifth.
“Again they battled with the waves, rising on the crests only to be hurled into the chasms. They neared the vessel, reached the bow where the sailors clung, eagerly watching their movements. The waves dashed against them, the wind roared around them, the snow blinded them, till human endurance could stand no more, and they were driven back, foot by foot. The poor fellows on the wreck saw their rescuers leave them, and begged for help in the most piteous tones. Reaching shore the brave men, wet to the skin and stiff with ice went for dry clothes, then once more made an attempt to reach the wreck, as it was certain the sailors could stand it but a few moments more. This time they moved down the beach and started out obliquely with the tide. Wilder than before, the blinding snow squalls beat upon them. When almost at the wreck, fearful breakers, too powerful to pull against, drove them back in spite of their greatest efforts. The cries of the sailors when they saw them lost ground were heart rending. They renewed their efforts and soon were alongside. They moved up to the floating mass of tangled rigging and loose boards, where they clung to a spar, thus steadying their boat, while one of the men, the mate, tried to cross the heaving wreckage. He reached a long spar, and putting his arms around it, crawled painfully forward, while the waves surged and beat over him constantly. At last he reached the boat and was helped in. Next the wheelsman made the attempt. He crossed a third of the spar then stopped and could come no further,–he clung helplessly with his bare hands and it seemed as if his life must be lost. In the boat below, an old sailor from many-harbored Maine, rose from his seat, stepped into the jostling mass of rigging and wreck, made his way to the perishing man and brought him back in safety. A few moments more and the surf was passed—the shore reached at last.
“All these brave men are the possessors of gold medals awarded them by the government at Washington, for their heroism. Said I not well there are knightly souls who walk among us to-day?”
“I think, my dear,” I said, “that one of these brave Traverse knights was your hero. Have I not guessed right?”
She glanced at me over her shoulder, half archly, half shyly, while a deeper flush rose to her cheeks.
“We must go home,” she said; “the dew is falling.”
We rose from our seats, and hand in hand, to help each other down the steep descent, took our way to the distant farm house, from one of whose windows a bright light shone out like a star to guide us on our path.
We can compare the account described in Some Traverse Heroes to the actual event as reported to the editor of the Grand Traverse Herald, November 27th, 1879 edition (The shipwreck occurred on 20, November of that year). At the outset we can see that M.E.C. Bates got the date wrong: it was not November of 1880 but a year before. There are a few other discrepancies—the wreck was discovered early in the morning, not at noon, two persons were saved, not three, and the rescue crew did not appear in an instant (it took a while to get two rescuers to risk their lives).
M.E.C Bates was correct when she said members of the rescue crew received medals for their bravery. John Blanchfield, William A. Clark, W.C. Ray, Charles A. Rosman, and John Tobin were awarded Gold Lifesaving medals on April 8, 1880 by the combined agencies of the Coast Guard, US Lifesaving Service, the Lighthouse Service, and the Revenue Cutter Service.
Even with occasional errors in the telling, Traverse Heroes is included here for several reasons. The description of the view from Prospect Hill is charming and reminds us of a panorama we can enjoy to this day. The language M.E.C. Bates uses in her descriptions recalls the florid prose of the era. It is refreshing to immerse ourselves in it as a change from our present style of rock-solid nouns and boldly stated verbs. Finally, she expresses the lofty values of her day as she talks about knightly gallantry, even providing a glimpse of the modesty of young women of the time when they are confronted with the possibilities of love: Upon being found out for having a love interest in one of the rescuers, the teller of the tale displays a flush in her cheek. The newspaper article itself expresses the editor’s opinion that the event reminds us of the “chivalry and knightly deeds” of old. The framing of the story as a tale of gallantry in both article and story is probably not a coincidence: M.E.C. Bates was married to Thomas T. Bates, the editor of the Grand Traverse Herald.
This high school, featuring the library shown above, received honors for its design in 1959. Gordon Cornwell was the architect of the building. Which school is it?
Thanks to reader Charlene, who solved the March Mystery Photo, we know this is the Central High School Library, a place much beloved by former students… or not.
Locally-produced digital magazine featuring nature and local history from the Grand Traverse Region.
