Ships and Salt Mines
It is said that at the end of the nineteenth century there were more millionaires per capita in Manistee, Michigan, than anywhere else in the country. Restless men need big things to spend their money on. In the late 1870’s Dr. Carl Rominger, a physician who moonlighted as the official state geologist of Michigan, met with local lumbermen and told them he was convinced there were salt deposits underneath Manistee, where the Michigan basin rose to within 2000 feet of the surface. The Reitz brothers, owners of one of the biggest sawmills in Manistee, spent some of their fortune to dig wells and began bringing up salt in 1880. Over the next few decades lumber faded as the primary local industry, but salt mining persisted.
Today there are two major salt mines in Manistee. Morton Salt bought the Reitz operation in 1930 and continues to operate it on the west shore of Lake Manistee, just a few blocks from the famous Painted Lady Saloon. Martin Marietta operates a magnesium hydroxide plant a couple of miles south on the opposite side of the lake. The latter is actually the larger operation. It turns out there are all sorts of industrial applications for magnesium hydroxide beyond antacids.
One of the most prominent landmarks in Michigan is the abandoned Manistee Iron Works building, a few blocks north of the Morton plant. The iron works were, in fact, an extension of the salt industry, as their primary product was huge salt evaporators. The building has been empty for years. I like to imagine it repurposed into a community attraction, perhaps an indoor arboretum and destination that attracted people year-round.
Today, tourism and fruit are the biggest industries in northern lower Michigan. The salt goes out by rail cars, but the coal needed to fire the evaporation plants comes in by ship. I have discovered there is a group of Manistee denizens who keep track of such things and enjoy keeping track of the huge ships as they come and go through the river channel that splits the town in two.
About a week ago we were fortunate enough to be in town on a Saturday morning as the laker Manitowoc arrived. A surprising number of people lined the riverbanks to watch the ship pass through, treating us with bone-rattling blasts from her foghorn. Fifty years of squeezing through channels and sidling up to docks has scraped the paint from the ship’s ribs. I’ve been watching the Manitowoc on a marine traffic app since then. A restless beast, it covers a remarkable amount of ground at a max speed of 13 knots. Since last weekend it has been to Bruce Mines in Canada, to Saint Joe’s in Michigan, then Toledo, Ohio. And as I post this it is on its way out of Manistee after having delivered another load of coal in the middle of the night.
If I lived in a big city, I would forever feel lost and overwhelmed. But I can get my mind around a place like Manistee. I am beginning to feel my roots digging into the earth here, and I’m good with that.