Curator tells of importance of limestone shipping as part of commemorative week
by Angie Asam– Staff Writer
As a part of Bradley Commemorative week Mark Thompson, curator at the Presque Isle County Historical Museum gave presentations on Calcite History and Great Lakes, Great Ships.
Thompson?s Calcite History presentation was done twice, on Wednesday and Saturday. Wednesday’s presentation preceded a guided tour of the Calcite Quarry. ?Several years ago our museum acquired Calcite?s photographic collection, they started documenting activities down there in 1911, before they even started production in the plant. We don?t know why, if it was so they?d have photographs to send to investors to keep them apprised on progress of the plant or if someone down there had a serious commitment to history and wanted to document what was happening because it was really quite extraordinary up here in the north woods,? said Thompson.
42,000 images were given to the museum beginning sometime around 1911 and ending in the 1960s. Most of the images were negatives in various sizes, one-third of them were big five by seven sheet film negatives.
?It was incredible, when they built the new mill, the existing mill down there, which is the tallest building in Presque Isle County and has been since 1930, they took 384 pictures, so almost every single day the photographer went over there and took a picture or two,? said Thompson.
Thompson had the job of inventorying all of the photos before they could be taken to the museum for storage and use and said you could almost lay the pictures out and watch the mill being built.
?In a period of about three years they built a new mill or screen house, a new shop to repair the heavy equipment, a new crusher and a new power plant. So basically they rebuilt the Calcite plant leading up to the Great Depression. They got all of it done just in time for the bottom to fall out of the U.S. Steel Industry and out of their business,? he said.
William F. White, the president of White Investment Company in New York City, founded Calcite Quarry, which was originally called Michigan Limestone and Chemical Company and began in 1910.
?Apparently White had some contact with U.S. Steel. U.S. Steel had been started right after the turn of the century and was the world?s largest steel producer. He somehow knew that they had need for a supply of high quality limestone for their steel making process. He may have been an investor in U.S. Steel or could have merely had a friend who was. But he knew if he could find a good source of limestone there was already a market for it with U.S. Steel.
?Somehow he found out about Rogers City, Michigan and the fact that there was a large deposit of limestone here. They actually started mining limestone here before the turn of the century but in very small quantities, in fact most of it was mined by hand and they would load 20 tons or so off for chemical analysis. They could never interest anyone in mining it commercially,? said Thompson.
He then spoke of the town settled around the quarry known as Crawford?s Quarry. ?The Crawford family came here from New York state right after the civil war and they had seen limestone mines out there where they cut these big blocks of limestone used to construct new buildings. When they first saw the limestone down there (at Calcite) they thought they had struck gold, but they soon found that limestone here was not like it was there, it had more impurities running though it, it was fractured, and could not be cut into these big blocks as it was in New York,? said Thompson.
White came along in 1910 and set up the company becoming its first president, Carl D. Bradley was hired in August of 1911 and became the next president. Until 1920 when White sold his interest to U.S. Steel, he and Bradley drove the quarry to become the largest in the world. A ship was needed to haul the product from the Calcite Quarry to many places around the Great Lakes which led to the formation of the Bradley Transportation Company.
Thompson went on to give the changes in the quarry through the years with the buildings that were used, including a power plant that was used by the quarry and the city of Rogers City. He also discussed the changes in production, including the absence of a market for fines, which there is now and how train cars were used to move limestone around in the beginning of mining. Up until the 1940s horses were used to move the blasting crews from one station to the next. As well as the changes in the number of employees throughout the years.
The presentation was almost an hour in length and gave those in attendance a better understanding of how the big hole in the ground we know as Calcite came to be and how the industry has changed over the years with technology and demand.
ON THURSDAY OF the Commemorative week Thompson gave another presentation titled ?Great Lakes, Great Ships? discussing the various types of ships on the lakes.
?There are two styles of boats that are unique to the Great Lakes, they are boats that the design was developed here and really for the most part didn?t catch on anywhere else in the world.
?The bulk freighter was first built in 1869 with a wood hull designed specifically for the iron ore trade. Since then over 1,000 have been built and were changed from wood to iron and steel, they were built from 1869 to 1971 in the same design on this side of the Great Lakes.
?The second type of ship that is uniquely Great Lakes is the self-unloader. The sign of a self-unloader is the boom on the deck, which swings over the side, as the stone is unloaded. There are some that don?t have that type of boom, those are known as self-discharging and were designed for specific harbors. Boats that were not self-unloading ships were known as straight deckers, they had cargo holds that were empty hulls, the self-
He then went on to discuss the construction of the thousand footers, the tug and barge systems and the other types of ships that were constructed and used on the Great Lakes for many years and continue to be used. Including those with the Pilot House in the rear of the ship instead of the front and many other features.
The Calcite Collection is on display at the Presque Isle County Historical Museum located in the Bradley House for all to enjoy the photos and history of such an integral part of our town and its history.