Surviving the test of time and fire
by Peter Jakey, Managing Editor
After nearly a century, they stand as reminders of a dark day in the history of Millersburg and northern Michigan. Burned out tree stumps from the Millersburg fire of July 22, 1911 still dot the landscape in many areas. Somehow, they?ve survived 100 years of extreme weather and defied the laws of nature, as creatures of the land have ignored the relics.
The stumps are out there to be found for anyone willing to go looking. Randy Clawson, 51, who has a little slice of heaven on 10 acres of land along the Ocqueoc River, and noticed several burned stumps on his property when he moved in about a year ago, has taken great interest in the ones on his land.
When he found the stumps, which number five, some six feet in diameter, he started posing questions about the history of the area and when they burned.
ACCORDING TO local historian Mark Thompson, curator of the Presque Isle County Historical Museum, the 1911 fire, which is believed to have started somewhere not far from Clawson?s property on Corriveau Road, nearly wiped out the town.
?It destroyed 47 buildings and did damages of about $125,000,? said Thompson, who wrote a book about the deadly Metz fire of 1908. ?It basically burned most of downtown Millersburg, which was much larger than it is now.? The lumber town of Providence, which was just west of Millersburg, also was destroyed. The fire consumed parts of Tower and Onaway and was called
The D & M Railroad, which ran through Millersburg, tried to send a rescue train to evacuate people, but the fire was too hot in Tower to get through. ?Just like the Metz fire, all along the D & M tracks there were these massive piles of logs waiting to be shipped,? said Thompson. ?When they burned, they burned at incredibly high temperatures.?
MOST OF Millersburg was rebuilt, but when another fire struck in 1929, taking seven buildings on the east side of Main Street, ?a lot of those buildings were not rebuilt.? It was the end of the lumber era.
Clawson is curious as to why the stumps, with their burned out centers, have lasted this long. ?When you have other trees that have fallen, and seem to be eaten pretty fast by the carpenter ants,? said Clawson. ?I don?t even know what type of trees they were. Somebody told me maple, another person told me cedar, but I don?t know.? Clawson is interested in preserving them, but is not sure what more can be done. He still may do some checking into a possible way of preserving them, and continues to be interested in any further information people may have.