HISTORY

Just as most of Northern Michigan, the Pigeon River Country was logged between 1860 and 1910. All of its magnificent pines went first. Many were floated to mills on the Black or the Pigeon River, or the Sturgeon River just to the west. The area was later veined with logging railroads which made it possible to reach timber away from the rivers and to take the valuable and heavy hardwoods which could not be floated as was the pine.

The logging was followed, and in some areas preceded by disastrous, consuming forest fires that swept the slashings and invaded the remaining timber repeatedly, even as late as the early 1930's.

Mingled into this time-space were many efforts to convert the land to farming use. At first the farms were for the raising of work horses and oxen for the logging camps, and for raising pigs, fruit and vegetables to feed the hungry loggers. Hay fields and oat crops were grown for the work animals, used for both logging and farming.

But after the logging ended, the sawmills, mill towns and supporting farms died, for there were very few roads, no industries, and climate and soils were not suitable for profitable farming.

Farms were abandoned and forgotten, but their locations are marked where a few large, sod-bound fields can still be found. The land and waters were all given back to nature, to heal the wounds left by those who had come and gone, having conquered this wild land like a broncobuster breaks a horse, with sharp spurs and single purpose.

The timber was gone, The Pigeon River Country remained "off the beaten path", little noticed by the public while its forests and wildlife were recuperating and its waters returned to natural conditions.

Abandonment of mills and farms and neglect in paying taxes caused large parts of the Pigeon River Country area to return to State ownership. By 1919, the State had acquired 6,468 acres in the northeastern township of Otsego County, and in April of that year the Pigeon River State Forest was established with a resident custodian living in a farm house.

First planting of pine, as a forerunner of a major effort to reforest the denuded lands of the area, was made in 1920 when 81 acres were planted.

In 1924 the DNR designated the Otsego Wildlife Refuge Unit east of Vanderbilt, in part coincident with the Pigeon River State Forest. Elk, which had been released in 1918 were increasing rapidly by that tine, and the refuge was intended to protect both them and the scarce deer in the area. For a short time a resident game keeper was assigned here, but by 1926 the entire state ownership was again administered by the supervisor of Pigeon River Forest.

Most of the Otsego Refuge was leased or under permit from private owners until 1926 when 10,600 acres were purchased for $3.75 per acre with Game and Fish Protection Fund money and added to the original 2,720 acres of the Refuge.

Planting of pines and clearing lines for fire protection were both well established activities by this time, and each increased as did the land in State ownership. By mid-1928 the Pigeon River State Forest included 19,200 acres and extended into adjacent Cheboygan County. Large acreages were both purchased and acquired through tax reversion in the late '20's and '30's. Lands purchased in adjacent Cheboygan County were designated as the North Pigeon River Refuge, which was closed to all deer hunting in 1931. Both the refuges and intermingled State Forest lands were administered by the forest supervisor.

Except for young growth of spruce and cedar in the many narrow swamps and a thicket of hardwood saplings on some of the areas of upland which had escaped the most recent fires, the land was either barren hills or just sparse "brush" when a Civilian Conservation Corps camp was established on the old farm land next to Cornwall Lake in 1933.

Some of the lakes were the repositories for slab wood, sawdust, and deadhead logs left after early logging. The streams had been scoured by the log drives, flushed by the release of dammed-up waters spring after spring. Abandoned logging railroad grades reached in all directions, and cleared log-decking areas were visible at strategic points along the rivers and railroad grades. Broken logs, exposed and rotting ties, big pine stumps and burned snags made it as plain as the fence posts, lilac bushes and barbed wire at the old homesteads just what had happened here. Some of these can still be found. It was not long ago.

Obvious needs were dealt with by the vigorous youths of the CCC. Roads were built using the old railroad grades as foundations wherever possible. Almost one third of the bare lands were hand=planted to native pines and were protected from fires by construction of a grid of interlacing fire-breaks, cleared to road width every quarter mile in the pine areas.

CCC labor and spring thaws removed the worst of the debris in the streams and healed the eroding banks. Young seedlings and saplings, both natural and planted, grew in size and numbers.

The forests grew and began to close the old fields. With so few people living in or using the area, wildlife flourished. The elk thrived and multiplied on the plentiful food supply and solitude to occupy this and the surrounding countryside. .

By 1927, elk were estimated to number possibly as many as 5OO, not enough to allow hunting, but in 1929 the Pigeon River Refuge was opened to hunting of deer, which no longer needed protection. The adjacent Otsego Refuge was kept closed to protect the elk, but a study showed that the elk ranged onto nearby lightly hunted private hunting clubs which afforded them considerable safety, and in 1940 the Otsego Refuge was also opened for deer hunting.

In 1952 redistricting and renaming of state forest lands resulted in division of the original Pigeon River State Forest into four separate forests for administrative purposes. The division was on the county line between Otsego, Cheboygan and Montmorency Counties, and a northerly extension of the Otsego-Montmorency County line (the base meridian) northerly through Cheboygan County. It left the lands in Otsego County in the Pigeon River State Forest, but transferred the northwesterly portions to the Hardwood State Forest, the northeasterly portion into the Black Lake State Forest, and the small acreage in Montmorency County to the Thunder Bay River State Forest. Administration of these contiguous state-owned lands was then and until now [i.e., 1973] in four locations: Gaylord, Indian River, Atlanta, and Onaway, with no resident personnel or office within the original Pigeon River tract.

From 1952 on, the old headquarter buildings were used as a laboratory and office for fisheries research, no longer as either forestry headquarters or as residences for anyone except on temporary assignments.

Management during the first 20 years of State ownership consisted of forest fire protection, including building miles of firebreaks which are still very evident, protection of elk and deer from hunting, planting of pine, protection against timber thieves and squatters, and development of three campgrounds. After that, timber sales, limited at first by the immature forests and scarce markets, elk research, and fish planting and research came into the picture.

At this time (1973), 65 percent of the state-owned lands in the Pigeon River Country have been purchased by the use of money from the Game and Fish Protection Fund. The remainder was acquired almost entirely by reversion to the state after non-payment of taxes by the former owners.

By 1950 and at an accelerating pace since then, timber, fish, wildlife and people have demanded and received considerably increased attention. Demands are presently far beyond adequate means for response.

Oil was discovered at the edge of the Black River swamp in 1970. Much has changed since.

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File:COMhist.htm 11/27/2001