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    Lost Bay City
    Lost Bay City
    Lost Bay City
    Ebook186 pages42 minutes

    Lost Bay City

    By Bloomfield, Ron

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    About this ebook

    When the phrase "Do you remember?" is uttered in Bay City, it is usually followed by the name of a hotel, restaurant, business, or building. Slowly, many parts of local history have been lost to the sands of time. Fire took many, followed by condemnations and the inevitable advance of progress. An empty lot may be all that remains of a once-prominent structure, but sometimes a new landmark emerges. In the case of one famous address at Center and Water Streets, the Wenonah Hotel rose out of the ashes of the Fraser House, another prominent facade. Seven decades later, the Wenonah, too, succumbed to fire; out of those ashes rose the Delta College Planetarium, a third-generation landmark. Photographs help residents remember, though each person who experienced something firsthand has his or her own distinct connection with these pieces of lost Bay City.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArcadia Publishing
    Release dateJul 13, 2015
    ISBN9781439652282
    Lost Bay City
    Author

    Bloomfield, Ron

    Ron Bloomfield is the director of operations and chief historian of the Bay County Historical Society and has extensively researched, written, and lectured about the maritime history of Bay County. The images chosen for this history are primarily from the extensive collections of the Bay County Historical Society, with additions from several other private collections. The Bay County Historical Society (founded in 1919) operates the Historical Museum of Bay County where more information on Bay County’s maritime past can be found in exhibits, publications, and programs.

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      Book preview

      Lost Bay City - Bloomfield, Ron

      Society.

      INTRODUCTION

      Many kids in the early 1980s wanted to be archaeologists because of Indiana Jones, the fedora-clad whip-carrying archaeologist portrayed by Harrison Ford in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Not because of riches or fame, but for the thrill of finding that which has been lost. Dr. Jones, this bigger-than-life movie hero, seemed to truly care about finding these pieces of lost human existence and returning them to the public realm.

      Think of this book as an archival archeology dig. We are uncovering remnants of Bay City’s past just like the slow, meticulous methods used by archaeologists uncovering artifacts that are then pieced back together to create a snapshot of a civilization at a particular time and place. Just like the archaeological dig, this city has layers, and our dig is the entire city, with a focus on certain areas where more documentation has been saved. Instead of three-dimensional artifacts, we are uncovering a very powerful tool, the photograph. The camera lens allows the subject to remain frozen in time, an exceptional way to preserve that which has been lost. Some of these featured places are snapshots in time, while for others we can use multiple images to see change throughout the years, some changing hands multiple times before finally succumbing to disaster, the wrecking ball, neglect, or transformation.

      Our subject, Bay City, sits at the exact place where the thumb of Michigan meets the mitten. It is an easily identifiable point, even on satellite images taken from space. The earliest inhabitants used the abundant resources of the area for food and subsistence. The area was visited early during the fur trade due to the easy access from Saginaw Bay to the entirety of the Great Lakes watershed and the trade routes that developed on the waterways therein. Few traders actually settled here until the early 1800s, when they started to take an interest in the resources. Permanent settlement started around the 1830s, and soon settlements started cropping up on both sides of the Saginaw River, which now runs through the center of the city. Five principal villages formed: Lower Saginaw (later Bay City) and Portsmouth on the east side, and Banks (1853), Wenona (1864), and Salzburg (1862) on the west side. In the latter half of the 19th century, those on the east side became Bay City in 1865, and the others combined to form West Bay City in 1877. In 1905, both sides of the river consolidated into one town, dubbed Greater Bay City at the time. The primary industry for most of the last half of the 19th century was lumber, a huge industry that encompassed the woods, mills, rivers, and other ancillary industries that supported and moved it forward. When the trees became scarce, the industry packed up and moved west. Bay City found it a necessity to diversify, and a host of other industries, many of which you will encounter on this tour, tried to fill the void. Through all of this, a city developed with its own distinct culture, heritage, and trappings, some unique to Bay City and others part of the larger collective heritage. Many of these manmade pieces of the day-to-day living, business, and entertainment were temporary, discarded in what was dubbed progress.

      Bay City is now known for its commitment to historic preservation, evidenced by the many historic markers, historic structures, and three nationally registered historic districts. However, this preservation ethic only dates back to the 1970s, with the near-demolition of our historic city hall, which was halted by preservationists. Today, that 1897 monument is a shining homage to Bay City’s prosperous heritage. Unfortunately, many other buildings succumbed to progress in the preceding years and were torn down to be replaced by other structures or simply made into parking lots. Some of this destruction was due to necessity, while others were removed unnecessarily. Many images exist that help fill in the patchwork puzzle of modern-day Bay City and show the progression of a community that was once the king of lumber in the Midwest, later devastated by the loss of that industry, and has spent over a century trying to piece together a community that would again prosper one day.

      The word lost can have several different meanings. Something that is lost may truly be gone from existence, or it may be hiding in plain sight. Additionally, something that is lost may be a tangible building or work of art, or it may be the intangible, as in a way of life or an organizational collective based on common goals, likes, or dislikes. The stories in this volume do not exist in a vacuum. Many things that have been lost have parallels or links to other such items or places, and many have been lost on several levels, both intangible and tangible.

      We have limited space and limited resources with which to make this journey. We are limited by the surviving photographs, the available research, the rights to publish certain photographs, and the existing stories. In addition, we only have so many words and photographs that can be used. There are many more things that have been lost to time than we have room to fill, so judgments were made based on a number of factors. Over 1,000 photographs were initially selected and had to be whittled down to a manageable amount for this book. If something you remember does not appear in this book, please keep all of this in mind. In addition, there have been many good books written on particular topics, some of which can be found in the bibliography at the end of this book. We also have a limited number of chapters within which to tell the story, and while we may have devoted more space to one topic than another, it does not mean that they are not each as important as the other. The Wenonah Hotel gets a full chapter by virtue of the story and the material available. J.A. Sparr has

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