Remember the Islands

The article below continues our journey back in time as we look for green living inspiration in the past. One of the most common questions I get as Manager of Historical programs at CNC is "What were the rivers like over 100 years ago?" This article, quoted from page one of the December 27, 1907 edition of The Midland Republican newspapaper helps to untangle that mystery. What will people say about our rivers today when they write about them 100 years from now?

“William Vance, who came to “The Forks” [in 1849] when there was no “Midland” here, says the old Tittabawassee was a much more beautiful river when he first became acquainted with it than it is now. Its banks were green down to the river’s edge, and above, it, as well as the Chippewa, extended away into an unbroken forest. For how many centuries their waters had moved peacefully down to the lakes undisturbed by the works of the pale face, no one can say.

Millions of logs float in the Tittabawasee
River, near today's Immerman Park in
Saginaw County. Photo Courtesy of the
 Midland County Historical Society.

There were deep places that have since become filled up and shallow. There were seven or eight feet of water where the famous steamer “Belle Seymour” [steamboat] used to land, a little way below where the north abutment of Benson street bridge now rears its rocky mass of concrete. Further down, about opposite where the lower part of the Dow Chemical plant is now located, there was an island 12 to 15 rods [66-82 yards] in length, covered in part with willows and in part with grass. This was never cultivated, but the millions of logs cut from the trunks of the majestic pines of Midland county and floated down the streams, often covering them from bank to bank for miles, assisted perhaps by changing currents have obliterated this island, now remembered but by few, and destined, no doubt, to be entirely forgotten.

A pair of Mallards rest on island
 in the Chippewa River

Another island slept in the bed of the Chippewa, just back of the Wm. Patterson farm, now the property of John McGregor, Jr. Mr. Patterson, father of Wm. Patterson, now a resident here, used to keep his hens on this island “in the good summer time.” It was an island 8 or 10 rods [44 -53 yards] in length, and gave the feathered bipeds a splendid place in which to roam about and gather worms and other rich morsels, at the same time being kept separate and apart from the garden. But this, too, is forever gone. The pine logs, too, have gone to add to the fortune of some enterprising lumber operator, while the rivers flow on between banks much changed in appearance from what they were in primitive days when the Indian and the reindeer and the bear took turns in dancing on the grassy slopes or plunging through the snows of winter.”