North Country History with Rob Burg

On this week's episode of North Country History with Rob Burg, I am joined by Bill Jamerson, an award winning documentary filmmaker turned author and performer, to discuss the life and experiences of CCC Boy Michael Rataj. Mike came from poverty in Detroit and came of age in the wilderness of Michigan's Upper Peninsula, where the CCC changed his life. Both Bill and I knew Mike and heard his numerous stories over the years...

Conservation and Reforestation in the North Country was of great importance in the beginning of the Twentieth Century, several states had their own programs to bring back forests, and the United States Forest Service was created to replant forests across the country. These programs did some good, early work, but the most important impact was made in the wake of the Great Depression.

When Franklin D. Roosevelt was innaugurated as the...

This episodes marks the beginning of Season 2 of the North Country History with Rob Burg podcast. We look at what will be coming up on Season 2 airing from June through August, 2025. But first we recap Season 1 as a refresher and also an introduction for new listeners. 

Season 2 will bring new guests to the podcast, take a look at the origins of the lumber industry in the United States in the Northeastern states of Maine, New York, ...

In 1917 with the United States of America's declaration of war against Germany, a call went out for volunteers to serve in the expanding U.S. Armed Forces. Not only were soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines needed, but so were lumberjacks, foresters, sawmill employees, and others who did work related to the lumber and forestry industries. These men were important support troops that were part of the unsung elements of all ar...

In this bonus episode of the North Country History podcast we commemorate Memorial Day today with Edward Hartwick. Most people know of Edward Hartwick as the man who Hartwick Pines State Park is named for, but what do most people know about Edward Hartwick? 

Edward Hartwick, a native of Grayling, Michigan was an army officer who attended the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York. Hartwick graduated from West Point i...

In the early Spring of 1854, 31 year-old David Ward, not yet known as "the Pine King" sought one of the state's greatest stands of "cork pine" (the highest grade of the Eastern White Pine) west of Otsego and Bradford lakes in Otsego County. This would be a race with the St. Mary's Falls Ship Canal Company's timber cruiser, Addison Brewer for the same stand of pine. 

With the backing of Detroit lumb...

In this final episode of the first season of the podcast, I am recording this remotely from the old lumber ghost town of Deward, Michigan. Deward lived as an actual town for just twelve years, 1900-1912, while the David Ward Estate logged off the last great pine lumber holdings of David Ward, Michigan's "Pine King" at the tail end of the white pine lumber boom. 

Deward was located on the banks of the Manistee River ne...

In this week's episode we travel to Hartwick Pines State Park where I visit with my old friend and former coworker Craig Kasmer, the park's interpreter/naturalist to learn about the wildlife that live in the northern forests. 

The Old Growth Forest at Hartwick Pines State Park is a unique area. The large white pines that survived the lumber era is the main attraction, but they are not the only special part of this forest. ...

In this week's episode, we depart a little bit, and get a little philosophical regarding forests and the wilderness. I want to introduce listeners to Sigurd F. Olson (1899-1982), one of my personal heroes. Sigurd Olson was an educator, canoe guide, outfitter, writer, and a leading voice in the preservation of wilderness. 

Sigurd Olson, the son of Swedish immigrants, his father being a minister,  was born in Chicago an...

Hartwick Pines State Park, located near Grayling, Michigan is a special place that preserves one of the few remaining Old Growth White Pine Forests in Michigan. On today's episode, special guest Hillary Pine joins the podcast to talk about the park and how it was created through the efforts of Karen Hartwick. Hillary is the Northern Lower Peninsula Historian for the Michigan Department of Natural Resources and the Michigan His...

In this episode, we head north to Michigan's Upper Peninsula and discover "the Kingston Plains." This is an area of cutover and burned over land, known as stumpfields because the most predominant feature on the landscape is the vast amount of fire-scarred tree stumps. 

Typically during logging operations there would be a lot of "slash" left after the big (and sometimes not so big) trees were harves...

Near the end of the logging era, there was a realization that our forests were not the inexhaustible resource that was once thought. Throughout the United States there was an effort to reforest the cutover lands and develop a new system of modern forestry. In Michigan this began to happen in the Grayling-Higgins Lake-Roscommon area of the northern Lower Peninsula.

In this episode of the North Country History with Rob Burg ...

This episode is a continuation of the previous episode "Winter Logging." After the logs were cut in the winter they were moved to the banking grounds to await the Spring breakup of ice on the rivers to move the logs by water to the sawmills at the mouths of the rivers on the Great Lakes. 

River drives were the most dangerous aspect of the logging industry. It took a steady and skillful man to be able to handle lo...

Prior to mechanized transportation, logging and winter were synonymous. The only way to move logs upwards of 5-6 miles was on ice and snow. In the white pine region, this made winter the ideal season to be logging in the forests. Large log sleds were pulled by a team of two horses, or oxen in some locations, over roads that had been iced and carefully groomed over time to support the heavy loads. They were taken most commonly to a ...

"The lumber industry was to Michigan in the 19th century as what the automotive industry was to Michigan in the 20th century."* It was what most people outside of Michigan thought of when they thought of Michigan. And it was the period between the Civil War and the beginning of the 20th century that made Michigan the leader in lumber production.

At the end of the U.S. Civil War the Michigan lumber industry resume...

Lumber has been an important part of Michigan since the earliest European settlements in the 1600s. With the founding of Detroit in 1701 by French explorer Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac, there would be a continuous need for the harvesting of white pine and other trees near settled areas. Jumping ahead a century to the creation of the Michigan Territory and the fire that destroyed Detroit the same year, lumber became an even more nec...

In this episode, listeners are introduced to the Eastern White Pine (Pinus Strobus). This tree, once rising upwards of 200 feet or more towered over the forests of eastern North America with trunks of six feet diameter. The European settlers to these shores found this tree to have an excellent quality of lumber that was both lightweight to work with and was buoyant to be moved by water from forest to sawmill. Not only was the white...

In this premier episode of North Country History with Rob Burg, you will meet me, environmental historian Rob Burg, learn of my love of the forests of the Great Lakes region, and why I think there are important stories to be told about these forests. The forests were home to numerous nations of indigenous North American people for centuries. It was the forests that held the wealth of furs that brought European trappers and traders ...