Bay City's First Wooden Waterlines Unearthed at Site of New Library
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Eight-foot long sections of hollowed out wooden waterlines made by the Michigan Pipe Works are shown after being dug up at the new library site at Center and Jefferson. (All Photos by Andy Rogers)
Bay City's first waterlines, wooden water pipes about 130 years old unearthed at the site of the new downtown library, may be preserved for posterity.
Guy T. "Tim" Moulthrop, president of Moulthrop-Clift Insurance Co., whose office is adjacent to the library site, is working with the Bay County Historical Society to save at least one of the eight foot long sections of pipe for historical display and educational use.
Several sections of the pipe were unearthed during digging for the library foundation. Mr. Moulthrop alerted news people and Bay County Historical Society officials and MyBayCity.com photographic correspondent Andy Rogers documented the find, as seen on this page.
Several sections of the pipe were unearthed during digging for the library foundation.
(Photo by Andy Rogers)
(Photo by Andy Rogers)
"Bay City was really one of the most advanced communities in terms of a municipal water system," said Mr. Moulthrop.
The wooden pipes found at the library site probably were installed in 1875 when a main was installed from Saginaw Bay at Oak Grove, four miles east. The first mains were made by theMichigan Pipe Works, a plant run by the same management as the National Cycle Manufacturing Co., a firm sold the the Chevrolet Motor Car Co. in 1916, converted to the manufacture of auto parts which became part of General Motors Corp. in 1918.
Henry B. Smith III, whose grandfather and namesake Henry B. Smith founded the National Cycle Manufacturing Co. in 1892, recalled that the firm made wooden pipe until 1955 when that firm also was sold to GM.
The forerunner of the Michigan Pipe Works was Northwestern Gas and Water Pipe Co., founded in 1869. Mr. Smith's grandfather took control of that firm in 1881. The firm sold pipes all over the world for use in mines, irrigation projects, factories and as gas lines. They were lighter and cheaper than iron, could withstand great pressure and were especially adapted to use in chemical plants where iron pipes might become quickly corroded.
Ironically the firm's hey day was during World War II when wooden pipes were in great demand by the government because of a shortage of steel. Wooden pipes made in Bay City were installed in many Army training camps, he said.
"After the war I managed the plant for a while and we made wood lined steel pipes up to 36 inches in diameter," recalled Mr. Smith. "We were pretty successful but the problem was that we had to use clear Douglas fir and redwood and the price of those materials skyrocketed."
The local firm experimented with the Dow Chemical Co. with plastic-lined pipe using Saran rubber and built a large plant in Cleveland. "That process went in the tank and so did the company," Mr. Smith recalled.###
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