An Old Town of Interesting History & Many Stories

"Bay City is an old town. It has lots of stories."

July 4, 2002       Leave a Comment
By: Dave Rogers

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"Bay City is an old town, so it has lots of stories."

That's how one writer describes the interesting facets of Bay City which are attracting people from all over the state and nation. Many local residents busy making a living haven't had time to catch up on local history. I hear comments like this all the time: "I really want to get up to the museum to see the maritime gallery, but I just never seem to get around to it."

I remember living for a time in the 1960s in Washington, D.C. I was surrounded by many attractions within minutes of where I lived, but I never got there to visit them. It took 40 years for me to return to see the sights I could have enjoyed way back during the Kennedy administration.

So one purpose of this column is to acquaint the people of Bay City, and elsewhere, with the attractions of our community and our wonderful history, some of which is being uncovered gradually by research and reflection.You may have heard that we have more than 40 tour buses from Detroit and points south stopping here this summer, one every two or three days. And, on several dates, up to four buses a day.



The Bay County Historical Society and the Bay Area Convention and Visitors Bureau have teamed up to promotethese visits. The Historical Society provides tour interpreters, called "step on guides," to step on the buses, grab a microphone and lead the tourists around the town with a narrated tour.This program is the natural outgrowth of the trolley tours sponsored by the Historical Society in recent years.

These regular tours are scheduled on Saturdays at 2 p.m. and take visitors down Center Avenue to explore the delights of the Victorian homes or around Third and Water streets on the infamous "Hell's Half Mile." Other tours feature the West Side, with its maritime heritage, ship captain's homes, Davidson drydock, Trombley House, Rev. Chillson's pre-Civil War house on Midland Street, etc.

The Chillson house (the original spelling) has beendocumented as a stop on the Underground Railroad which conveyed escaped black slaves to Canada and so is one of Bay City's most truly historical sites.And of course the Portsmouth Tour, of which Portsmouth native Marge Olson is the incomparable master.This tour features the area comprising the old Portsmouth village, which was combined with Lower Saginaw to make up Bay City. One of her best tales of local folk in Portsmouth concerns a family named Anderson who had a son named Noder Anderson. How did he get this name? Well, it seems as the doctor was leaving the Anderson home after delivering a child he was asked the name of the newborn infant. "Anoder Anderson," he grumbled, indicating the boy was one more in a long line of the same family. And so thechild was tagged with the moniker, Noder. Perhaps the Anderson's had run out of traditional names anyway.

Interesting though the Center Avenue Victorian homes, West Side and Portsmouth tours may be, it is the lumber era culture of Hell's Half Mile which has caught the fancy of the tour companies bringing in visitors.The CVB's executive director, Shirley Roberts, and marketing specialist, Dorothy Dean, have promoted the tours under the title "Ghosts, Legends and other Bay City Lore."

The CVB prospectus sent to tour companies says: "Stories of Hell's Half Mile, back in the 1800s, Bay City was a roaring town. A lumber and shipbuilding town, it really cuts loose when, after six or seven months of working in the woods, as many as 5,000 loggers would hit Water Street, often called Hell's Half Mile or the Block of Blazes. Names of the town's dens of sin included the Red Light, the Brunswick, Ma Duffy's and the Blood Tub.

Your group will enjoy touring the district with turn-of-the century brick buildings which today house quaint specialty shops, eateries and pubs. Of course the infamous Fabian Joe Fournier, reputed model for Paul Bunyan, features prominently in the stories.We have more historical sites to offer than Hell's Half Mile and Center Avenue. And, many sights are preserved and can still be visited.

These include:

The Consistory Cathedral houses the Cornwallis Surrender Chair, in which Lord Cornwallis sat when he signed the British Army's capitulation to Gen. George Washington at the end of the Revolutionary War in 1787.

The Pere Marquette Depot, an outstanding example of Prairie Style architecture popularized by Frank Lloyd Wright, now being cleaned up by entrepreneur and contractor Jim Reid, was the headquarters of one of the nation's first urban shopping centers, the Rail Development Project, installed by the New York Central Railroad in 1952;

The old Davidson Dry Dock in Veterans Memorial Park was a marvel of engineering for its time, its pumps able to empty millions of gallons of water in a few hours so ships could be repaired; also see the interpretive area on the riverfront about the hulks of the Davidson ships, the longest wooden vessels ever built;

Trombley, or Centre House, the first frame structure in Bay City, dates to 1837 and was constructed of lumber brought from Detroit; it was a trading post, hotel and center of the new community; and

Pine Ridge Cemetery, established in 1858 by Judge James Birney, a former lieutenant governor of Michigan and ambassador to Holland, where the city's first burials from the 1840s were relocated; it is home to many pioneers and more than 200 Civil War veterans; it is a story in itself.

So, if you have been putting off seeing the local historical sights, start with the maritime gallery in the Museum and hit them all. Certainly you and your family should see what people from all over the nation are coming here to see. Climb aboard the trolley tours and hear the stories. You'll be amazed, enlightened and educated about the importance of local history.

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Dave Rogers
Dave Rogers is a former editorial writer for the Bay City Times and a widely read, respected journalist/writer in and around Bay City. (Contact Dave Via Email at carraroe@aol.com) More from Dave Rogers

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