Crawford avalanche. (Grayling, Mich.) 1879-19??, 1895-10-24
GARDEN OF CHICAGO.
WEST MICHIGAN DEVELOPS
WONDERFUL RICHES. =
still Rich In Untouched Tracts of Vir-
gin Hard Wood Forests Growing in
Fame as a Health Confer and Sum-
mer Resort.


Her diversified Resources.
A Grand Rapids correspondent of the
Chicago Chronicle says:
| Draw circle about Chicago with
radius of 200 miles and the four largest
cities inclosed with her-Chicago, Mil
waukee, indianapolis and Grand Rapids.
The elatter city, with its SO, 900 inhabitants.
Is the commercial center of Western
Michigan-a section of country destined
within few years to be the richest ter
ritory tributary to the empire city of the
West.
Twenty or thirty years ago this region
was vaguely known across the lake as
comparative wilderness with few saw
dust towns along the shore that furnished
Chicago with considerable quantities of
pine lumber and occasionally a million
aire. 1t also afforded limited market
for fat pork, fine -four, flannel shirts, bad
whisky and other numbering supplies.
which were shipped over on lumber
schooners, late in the fall, just before the
wild and woolly west shore went into its
annual sis months condition of hiberna-
ton. North of Grand Haven about the
only communication was by schooners in
summer and bobsleighs in winter. Now
important towns in Western Michigan
over the eleven railroads radiating from
Grand Rapids, while thirty frst-class pas
senger steamers make regular trips from
the metropolis of the lakes to the twenty
fine flourishing lake ports between st. Joe
and Mackinac.
Has Become Chicago's Garden.
! Then the Chicago lumberman bought
large tracts of east shore timber land
/ from the Government for $1.25 per acre,
(, cut off a few of the finest pine trees and
let the soil and wealth of hardwood go
back to the State rather than pay tax
of 3 cents an acre. Now much of that
same land commands the highest price
of any farming soil in the Northwest.
, The once comparatively unknown and
unappreciated west shore has become
! Chicago's great garden and orchard, her
big wood yard and her favorite summer
playground. Its little lake shore ham
let's have developed into n dozen prosper
Gus and progressive cities of from 5000
to 10000 population.
| In it's palmy days of pine numbering
the west shore shipped as high as $10,-
100000 worth of rough lumber annually.
! This year it will market S12,000.000
I than half the trees planted i'm full bear
( ing. The peach crop alone will bring $5,-
100000. Apples, plums, pears, berries,
grapes, melons and other garden truck
will make up another $5,000,000. Kala-
mazoo alone exports celery to the value of
! over S1,OOOO00. Grand Haven, Grand
! Rapids and other places add another ST.
100000 which makes the aggregate of
$12,0OO.00O, or a third more than the
wheat crop of the entire State.
The Peach Belt.
The peach belt of Michigan extends
| from st. Joe north to Traverse Bay, ex-
tending inland about forty miles, where
the warm winter winds protect the buds.
The standard peach orchard has 160 trees
! to an acre, which, one year with another
produce one bushel to the tree, worth oil
an average 81 per bushel. This fruit is
allowed to ripen fully on the tree, is
picked in the afternoon and is on the
Chicago market the next morning as fresh
as when taken from the tree, havjlg
been brought over by night in the cool
hold of steamer. safe from heat, dust
or bruises. With such advantages snd
cheap, short, rapid transit. Michigan
| fruit growers can defy the world in Lske
|, Michigan markets.
| The three leading peach counties are
Allegan. Kent and Oceana. BerTien
! leads on berries and melons. Occana on
plums and Van Buren, on grapes. st.
Joseph County produces one-half the pep
permint oil made in the United States.
| One company alone operates fifty mint
distilleries in that county.
From Oceana north to Traverse Bay is
| the great potato belt of the Northwest,
where the finest quality and largest yield
per acre is obtained. About Traverse
Bay the heavy SHOWS enable the farmer
TO leave his crop in the ground until
spring and then dig and market it fresh
at good prices. The average peach orchard
will pay about x160 an acre. Yet even
better results are obtained by growers of
berries and melons. In California land
producing no better results sells for from
$500 to 81 1000 an acre and the next five
years will witness lively advance in the
value of Western Michigan fruit and gar
dening lands.
Forestry Products.
LAUNDERING is not a declining industry
in Western Michigan. The output was
| never greater than this year. The man.
moth sawmill, which produced only rough
pine lumber, is passing away, but in its
place have come numberless small hard
wood and hemlock sawmills, cedar shin
gle-mills. planning mills for half finished
products. cooperage plants, basket facto-
ries and large shippers of cedar poles,
posts and blocks. hemlock bark, oak, cedar
and hemlock railroad ties and hundreds of
other forestry products, rough and fin
| ished, which were not worth handling
| few years ago.
1t is mistaken idea that Michigan
| timber is mainly pine. The pine belt
which made the most Of Michigans mil
| lionaires extended north from Grand
Haven about 100 miles To Manistec and
reached across the Lower Peninsula to
Saginaw and Lake Huron. AS a wealth
producing forest its equal has never been
found on the face of the globe. Yet the
timber on this tract was less than one
third pine. South of Grand Haven the
State was mainly hardwood. Of which
little remains. North of Manistee to
Mackinaw, covering one-fourth of the
Lower Peninsula, is the finest forest of
hardwood hemlock and cedar ever found
in the United States. Not per cent of
.hs timber has been cut. Already more
than 600 miles of logging railroads have
been built through it,
Mr.. Wards Big Tract.
David Ward. of Detroit, who made
/ S10.000.0O0 i'm pine, bought 100000 acres
of this land for $1,000. 600. and has fifty
miles of railroad graded through IL, con-
Meeting Lakes Michigan and Huron, COM
pleted ready for the iron. There is now
market for every kind Of timber found
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