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The name "Skull Island" is well known by generations of south end residents of Bay City.

KING KONG REVIVAL: Skull Island Fictional Ape's Home Real History Site Here

December 24, 2014       Leave a Comment
By: Dave Rogers

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The name "Skull Island," well known by generations of south end residents of Bay City as a much visited factory ruin on the Saginaw River, is fated to become even more popular when it emerges as the title of a high-touted movie renewal of the King Kong series in 2016.

The newest local history book published by Historical Press L.L.C., of Bay City, Michigan, is "Mysteries of Skull Island & the Alkali," (110 pages, $15) by D. Laurence Rogers.

"Mysteries" recalls the 1640s era massacre of the Sauk Indian tribe by rival tribes, part of the Beaver Wars, in the Saginaw Valley. The conflict reflected the competition underway between the French and the British over control of the fur trade in North America that would last until 1701. The few surviving Sauks were exiled to Wisconsin where they merged with the Fox tribe to become known as the Sac & Fox.

After the Sac & Fox tried to establish farms along the Rock River in Illinois, they were massacred by U.S. troops, including young officers Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis, in the 1832 Black Hawk War. Remaining members of the tribe were exiled to Indian Country, Oklahoma.

The author tells of interviewing Sauk Chief Jack Thorpe, son of famed athlete Jim Thorpe, in 1980 at the tribal reservation in Stroud, OK. Jim Thorpe was a grandson of Chief Black Hawk.

The new book also recalls the North American Chemical Company operated in Bay City 1898-1928 by the United Alkali Company, Ltd., of Liverpool, England. The book features photos of the abandoned ruins at the site today and the factory during its hey-day.

The firm made chemicals worth an estimated $481 million (today's value) in 30 years of operation and employed up to 250 men at its height. A large share of the explosives used by the British Army during World War I were shipped from the Alkali plant in Bay City to Great Britain.

The McGraw Lumber Mill had also occupied the historic site at the apex of the lumber boom, 1869-1888, going out of business as the timber in Michigan ran out and Great Britain placed a tariff on logs from Canada that had kept the trade alive for a decade.

The McGraw mill was one of 120 mills on the river between Bay City and Saginaw. Salt wells on the 250 acre mill site, including Skull Island, became the source of valuable salt brine processed into valuable chemicals here and at the Dow Chemical Company in Midland, spawning a huge new chemical firm that is one of the largest in the world.

The Saginaw Valley derives its name from an Indian word, O-Sauk-e-non, meaning "land of the Sauks," states the 1883 History of Bay County by the H. R. Page Publishing Company of Chicago.

The book also includes the story of the 1819 Treaty of Saginaw, negotiated by Gen. Lewis Cass, in which the Chippewa ceded 6 million acres of a tomahawk-shaped area from Kalamazoo to Alpena for $3,000 in silver down and $1,000 a year "forever."

Skull Island is a 24-acre plot in the Saginaw River south of 41st Street in the south end of Bay City where skulls and bones were found by William R. McCormick and other early settlers. The island was joined to the mainland in 1966 by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers using 300,000 cubic yards of dredged fill. Today it is privately owned and is still called Skull Island on the Bay County tax rolls.

The name "Skull Island" has been adopted by Six Flags Great America theme park in Chicago for its 100,000 square foot interactive water playground. The name is also being used by famed movie director Peter Jackson in his King Kong revival, Skull Island, slated for release in 2016. The film stars Kong, the huge iconic gorilla, in a host of new adventures, some also featuring Godzilla.

The film marks the first attempt to revisit the classic Universal Pictures titan since Peter Jackson's King Kong (2005) delivered a technically-impressive (but much criticized) remake. "But if one bad movie isn't enough to kill a creature like Godzilla, it seems, then a character as memorable as King Kong deserves another fight," one critic wrote.

A breathless review of a Comic-Con announcement of the upcoming Legendary/Universal film by Peter Dyce states: "With narration describing an entity that was 'improbable,' and using passages from Joseph Conrad's 'Heart of Darkness' describing a soul that had been driven mad by being alone in the wilderness, the trailer ended with a massive gorilla -- King Kong himself -- emerging from the trees with a roar, and a furious bout of chest beating. Legendary would go on to describe the film as "based on the famed Skull Island, the cinematic origins of another classic beast King Kong, confirming that they had provided Legendary the chance to reboot the iconic monster just as they had with Godzilla." ###

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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)

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