Talk:Seney, Michigan

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Seney Michigan is a wonderful close-knit community. Sporting two motels, several cabin rentals and several individual homes to rent daily, or weekly. One grocery store, Bank and two eating establishments, two gas stations/mini marts, a custom sewing shop, and of course one bar where all the locals gather each day for the latest local information and laughs and maybe try their hand at gambling with the keno machine. A historical museum where you hear the colorful, and tragic stories of the past,the famous Fox river runs through town, a truss mill, and campground and a privately owned bird sancuary that the public can visit. The snowmobile trails and four wheeler trails through out the area are lots of fun. hunting and fishing is an ongoing event depending upon the season. and if picking wild fruit is your thing then you have reached heaven.209.83.55.201 17:29, 27 July 2007 (UTC) Everyone who stops in Seney leaves with a smile on their face and a chuckle in their heart.

In 1882, Alga Smith Company began their logging operations on the abundant virgin pine forests which thrived in the quick draining sandy soil common to the area. Having no major highways or even railroads at this time, a banker from New York named George Ingram Seney invested both his and his bank’s money into constructing a railroad. Given the lack of transport in the area at this time as well as the budding industry, this seemed like an astute business plan. Unfortunately this was not the case, and he soon filed for bankruptcy. The ownership of the railroad then moved to the hands of Duluth, South Shore and Atlantic (DSS&A), a railroad company of minor endeavors and marginal profits.

Also in 1882, a man named Phil Grondin moved to the area as a lumberjack cook and became one of the best-known names of Seney, after only Seney himself. Grondin remembered early Seney as “a cluster of buildings along the railroad tracks with mud and water in the wretched streets… and only one boarding house.” As the timbering in the area increased however, so did the town’s population.

By 1890, Seney was home to 15 separate logging companies and 3,000 people. Most of these people were men working as lumber jacks who earned up to $1.75 a day, and spent as much as they could on alcohol and female companionship at night. Each spring, 3,000 more lumberjacks would make their way to Seney from various lumber camps tucked away in the surrounding forest, and they added to Seney’s scene. At this time, Seney had 10 hotels, over 13 saloons, a handful of ‘hoodlums’, a school, two general stores, a meat market and a Catholic church.

More interesting than the buildings though, were the stories coming out of them. Black and blue and sometimes red men, with names that were equally colorful roamed the tiny town. Some include: Tea Pot Kelly, Protestant Bob McGuire, Old Light Heart and P. K. (or J., depending on the story) Small. Bob McGuire was supposedly a peaceful man, though when he did fight, his thumbnails would leave gaping wounds in the faces of his opponents. P. K. Small, or “Snap Jaw,’ was known for earning food and drinks by biting the heads off of live reptiles. Another story consists of him forcibly removing the head of a fellow lumberjack’s pet owl, at which point he was beaten with a peavey handle. Leon Czolgosz, despite lacking the name of a western bandit, is perhaps the most historically notorious Seney area resident due to his assassinating President William McKinley in 1901.

Misinformation, too, has been known to seep out of Seney. As a part of a 1940’s writing project called “Michigan: A Guide to the Wolverine State, a reporter from Chicago propagated what she believed to be true tales of Shanghaiing, slavery and the “Ram’s Pasture” (an overcrowded shack where slave laborers were chained together at night). “The rumors from wild Seney were true – and more, the place was a hell camp of slavery!” In fact, the rumors were not true, but this did not stop the stories from being printed in metropolitan dailies throughout the country. These rumors were only tall tales told by local lumberjacks.

Popular American author Ernest Hemingway produced a short story featuring the area titled “Big Two-Hearted River” in which Nick, the main character, fishes on the Two-Hearted River and explores an almost entirely charred landscape. Because of the orientation and location of the river in relation to Seney, as portrayed in the story, the river that Hemingway fished is much more likely the Fox River. The name switch is most likely due to the more poetic nature of the Two-Hearted River. A similar sentiment is felt by Bell’s Brewery Inc., whose I.P.A. takes the name of the river and the image of the trout that Hemmingway and his character Nick sought after in Seney.

The blackened chalky forests and burnt down town experienced by Nick in “Big Two-Hearted River,” is also merely a product of fiction. Though forest fires were common in the surrounding area and numerous buildings built down in Seney’s heyday, there was never a fire massive enough to take out the whole town and surrounding area as was depicted in the short story.

The real end to Seney’s logging tradition and bustling town came with the over-logging of the surrounding pine forests. The pine trees had been depleted around Seney in the 1890s, leaving a few small trees and much undergrowth. It was during this time when forest fires became more common, though they never reached the town. Instead, they created large expanses of ashy soil, which proved to be an ideal mixture for blueberries and bracken ferns to grow in. Rising from the ash-laden forests like some kind of economical phoenix, these resources enable people of the region to continue to live off the land. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 97.86.87.229 (talk) 13:08, 5 January 2012 (UTC)