Great Lakes Lumber Towns and Frontier Violence: A Comparative Study

Some forest historians have suggested that lumber towns "lacked the good dramatic stories of the cowtowns and mining camps in terms of conflict, excitement, and colorful characters.'1 If the shanty boy had saddled a horse every morning, worn a six-gun, and engaged in deadly gun fights, perhaps he would have stood alongside the cowboy as the symbol of the American frontier. Logging aficionados are quick to claim that the lumber towns can match the cow towns and mining camps "blow for blow with action, mayhem, tragedy, violence, color, loneliness, songs and legends," but until recently few studies have addressed the truth behind these claims. How violent really was the American frontier?2 Do the logging centers of the American frontier truthfully belong within the tradition of frontier violence popularly associated with western cattle towns and mining camps? In fact frontier lumber towns in the Great Lakes states produced plenty of romance, color, and mayhem. During the white pine era the three largest lumbering centers in Michigan developed reputations as the toughest towns on the Great Lakes. Muskegon, located on Lake Michigan, had its infamous Sawdust Flats. The Sawdust, an area of "unspeakable whoredom and violence," was built on a sawdust fill running six solid blocks along the lake. East Saginaw, on the Saginaw River near Lake Huron, had its White Row, "the roughest, toughest, fightingest spot in the Saginaws." In nearby Bay City the Catacombs, "undoubtedly the toughest place anywhere along the Saginaw River,"