30 years ago

April 23, 1995 – MARQUETTE – Birdwatchers participating in a Marquette County sandhill crane count waited in the wetlands before dawn Saturday hoping to hear the large birds’ trumpeting calls echoing over the water. The census was the country’s first as part of a larger effort sponsored by the International Crane Foundation in Baraboo, Wis. Twelve counters in seven groups were positioned at various locations waiting to record crane behavior, as well as document their presence or absence in likely habitats. “Being our first count, we were interested in finding the sites where cranes are, but in terms of population surveys, finding out where they are not is just as important,” said count coordinator Melinda Stamp of Marquette’s Laughing Whitefish Audubon Society. Some 17 cranes were seen at a site in Skandia, one was heard in Sands and five were seen and heard at the Jeske Flooding Area in northeast Marquette County. Stamp said it’s too early to tell whether most cranes have returned to the Upper Peninsula. Sandhill crane numbers, once very low, have increased significantly since the 1950s. In 1944, the first official state count recorded only 27 pairs in the Lower Peninsula. A 1987 count found 642 pairs in the Lower Peninsula. In the U.P. the large birds have bred successfully in all but four counties.

60 years ago

April 23, 1965 – ST. IGNACE – The Mackinac Transportation Co. is removing the train ferry, Chief Wawatam, from service next week to begin a $600,000 boiler repair project. A key item in proposals by three railroads to abandon freight service to much of Lower Northern Michigan, the vessel provides a railway bridge across the Straits of Mackinac. Company officials say it is being sent to Manitowoc, Wis., for the repairs and will be replaced for most of the season by a carferry from Ann Arbor Railroad. Temporary repairs were made on the Chief Wawatam’s boilers last summer when it remained in service and was moved from dock to dock by a tug. The operating firms sought Interstate Commerce Commission permission last summer to abandon the ferry on grounds of declining use and revenue plus estimated heavy cost of repairs required for certification as seaworthy. Permission was denied when the temporary repair plan was presented and State Atty. Gen. Frank Kelley obtained an injunction compelling a continuance of the ferry service.

Superiorland Yesterdays is prepared by the reference staff at the Peter White Public Library in Marquette.