Southern Alleghenies Conservancy

Transcription

bjbjU Moss: This is xe "Moss, Len" Len Moss from Glidden Drive. Today I m sitting with a good friend and neighbor, xe "Brogan, John" John Brogan. John has an interesting background, both in the world of finance and banking, and also as a man who had a vision about xe "Glidden Drive" Glidden Drive and saw it through. We re sitting today on John s property on Glidden Drive and we re going to ask John if he could brief us a little on early history of this beautiful peninsula and especially this area here, along Glidden Drive and down to xe "Portage Point" Portage Point. John, who was here originally? Brogan: Well, Len, briefly the history of this area starts with the first presence of western man, xe "Father Marquette" Father Marquette and xe "Nicolet, Jean" Jean Nicolet. They came through here in 1672 and used the Portage Point area, where the xe "Indians" Indians would portage from the lake to the bay which is now right next to the xe "Coast Guard Station" Coast Guard station; the canal. They were exploring the area for the French who had established their presence in what we now know as Canada they called it xe "New France" New France at the time. Then this land changed governance from France to England after the xe "French and Indian War" French and Indian War in 1757. Then, shortly after that the xe "Revolutionary War" Revolutionary War this land became part of the United States under the xe "Northwest Ordinance" Northwest Ordinance which was appended to the xe "Treaty of Paris" Treaty of Paris, where we got our independence from England. The French convinced the Brits, and the Brits convinced xe "Adams, Franklin" Franklin Adams, that they ought to maintain navigation that the water should be forever be free because the French sold the Brits on the idea that the only thing that was out here was fur, and the canoers and voyagers had to get free access, so you couldn t have ownership by property owners of sections of lakes and streams fenced off. Moss: John, where was the American native at this time? Brogan: American natives were the xe "Winnebago" Winnebago, now called the xe "Ho-Chunk" Ho-Chunk, and the xe "Potowatami" Potowatami, for which a state park is named. Transient natives would come out for the fishing season to Whitefish Bay, camp and catch whitefish in primitive wooden twig nets and traps. They would dry them for the winter and then move on. There s still a burial ground up in the Park. In 1848, xe "Wisconsin" Wisconsin was the last of the five states to go from territorial status to statehood: xe "Ohio" Ohio, xe "Michigan" Michigan, xe "Indiana" Indiana, xe "Illinois" Illinois and Wisconsin. In the treaty from xe "England" England, and the 13 original colonies were given this area south of the xe "Great Lakes" Great Lakes, north of the xe "Ohio River" Ohio, west of the xe "Allegheny Mountains" Allegheny Mountains, and east of the xe "Mississippi River" Mississippi River. The first American presence was xe "fur trading" fur trading. xe "Astor, John Jacob" John Jacob Astor had a trading post in xe "Green Bay" Green Bay and Green Bay was a first settlement in the xe "Wisconsin Territory" Wisconsin Territory. When we became a state, Wisconsin was 35 million acres, and in the 1820s and 30s, there were a series of treaties with the woodland Indians. Five million acres went to them, and around 20 million acres was government land. It gave 10 million acres to the State of Wisconsin so that they would sell it for internal improvements, roads, etc. They retained 20 million acres which the federal government sold, and gave as patents for services rendered. So a lot of the land up here in Door County was relatively infertile. A lot of it was given to xe "Civil War veterans" Civil War veterans. Door County had some pines not a lot, but it had some pineries and so you had Whitefish Bay, with sand, and xe "Sherman Bay" Sherman Bay, with sand, and that would support pines. The shallower soil wouldn t support white pines. In the middle of the Nineteenth Century the commercial efforts were at logging and fishing. By the 1820s fur was trapped out. Moss: Was it fish that was transported out of this area? Where would they send it, down to xe "Chicago" Chicago? Brogan: The fish, and almost all of transportation was by boat. And so you had big lumber docks built in many of these villages along the lake and the bay. I think there was a thousand, fifteen hundred foot long dock that was built out in xe "Jacksonport" Jacksonport. You can still see the timbers. Moss: When did farming get underway? Brogan: After the Civil War. But it was pretty primitive stuff. There s only 18 inches average topsoil, so it wasn t very prosperous. North of Sturgeon Bay it was German and Norwegian. The xe "Mennonites" Mennonites settled Ephraim; south of Sturgeon Bay where the soil got deeper were the xe "Belgians" Belgians. They came over for the same reason the xe "Irish" Irish did; they had a famine in the 1840s. The first settlers before the migrations were xe "Yankees" Yankees. The early governors in Wisconsin all came from New England. The early xe "German immigrants" German immigrants came to Milwaukee and Manitowoc and spread out and farmed eastern and southern Wisconsin. The later immigrants were the xe "Swedes" Swedes, the xe "Danes" Danes and the xe "Norwegians" Norwegians and they settled more in western Wisconsin and xe "Minnesota" Minnesota. But out here, one resource they had was several: fishing and timber and very minimal subsistence farming. The big event for this area was the xe "Chicago Fire of 1871" Chicago fire of 1872. The fire caused a tremendous demand for lumber resources, so they cut everything they could cut to ship to Chicago, particularly pine, in lower Michigan and eastern Wisconsin. The xe "Peshtigo fire" Peshtigo fire happened at the same time far more extensive damage in fact, the Peshtigo fire blew burning ashes from Peshtigo on the west side of the bay all the way over here and caused some blackening in xe "Brussels" Brussels. So that was another impetus for logging, and that logging sporadically went on, even with the hardwoods for the paper mills that were developing in the xe "Fox Valley" Valley. By the turn of the century, these areas were pretty well all logged off. What you had left is this relatively remote geographic area that ended at the tip of the peninsula and was on the way to nowhere. My grandfather, a contractor in Green Bay, built part of the road system that became state highway 57. But in the early 1920s the way to get here was to go from Green Bay to xe "Algoma" Algoma first. Moss: Now, John, when did the xe "trains" trains run up through and into this area? Brogan: The trains ran up here in a kind of a stub connection of the xe "Green Bay & Western" Green Bay & Western. It was the xe "Ahnapee & Western" Ahnapee & Western and it came up the xe "Ahnapee River" Ahnapee River from Algoma and serviced Sturgeon Bay, it never went further, it never went through, cause it was on the way to no place, and so it just ended there. And it s my understanding that there was minimal or limited passenger service at all. Northern Wisconsin developed considerably at the time, because the rail system was much more extensive. They were built to take the timber out, and that was big timber; it took them 40 years to clearcut the northern part of the state. Moss: Let s fast-forward into a kind of a personal recollection of your own. As a youngster, were you vacationing up here, did your family have a place up here? Brogan: My father had a 20% interest in the xe "Smith shipyards" Smith shipyards in Sturgeon Bay, in 1939. He had a cottage with his partner xe "Leathem Smith" Leathem Smith on xe "Portage Point" Portage Point, now on xe "Lake Forest Park Drive" Lake Forest Park Drive, near the modern xe "Coast Guard Station" Coast Guard station. Our home was Green Bay but I got to know this area as a very young boy and during xe "World War II" World War II, when most of these roads, including Glidden Drive, were all just gravel, and there was no power. The power on xe "Glidden Drive" Glidden Drive was only built to xe "Goldenrod Lane" Goldenrod Lane, about 3 miles from the south end of Glidden. And there was no power down on Lake Forest Park; electrical service wasn t brought out yet because of the copper shortage in World War II. Moss: Was the same true of the other side of the peninsula? Brogan: No, the other side was always more highly developed and popular because the farming was a bit better over there and those little bayside communities existed as group clusterings of people and so forth. Out here it was always pretty lonely. Moss: When did the xe "Glidden Lodge" Glidden Lodge appear on the scene? Brogan: Ewald Schmock worked for his older brothers at the xe "Schmock Ice and Coal Company" Schmock Ice and Coal Company in xe "Michigan City, Indiana" Michigan City, Indiana, and they came to Door County working for xe "Glidden, Orrin" Orrin Glidden to build the roads through this area. Orrin Glidden was a most interesting fellow. He did very well with investments in the early 20s and then he partnered with one of the country s largest scalawags, xe "Insul, Sam" Sam Insul, who had a rather checkered career. Sam was the utility king and he promoted a railroad called the xe "South Shore Railroad" South Shore Railroad from downtown xe "Chicago" Chicago to xe "South Bend, Indiana" South Bend. The bondholders and stockholders kept losing money, but Sam made a lot of it by promoting and getting land grants from the Illinois legislature in the 20s. According to the story I heard from the Schmocks, Glidden went to Insul and said, ve got some Indiana sand dune land. Let s develop it to the burgeoning middle class in Chicago and they can get to their weekend house by just an hour s ride on the South Shore Railroad. Sure enough, it was very profitable. They platted places in xe "Long Beach, Indiana" Long Beach, Indiana, that still exist today in the national park. They found out, that unless you allow easy access to the water from the inland lots, the non-shore lots develop into trailer trash. So that s why Glidden Drive has these shore accesses and so many 60-foot wide lots. Moss: How did Ewald end up with this stretch of land? Brogan: Glidden came up here with Insul in the mid to later 20s, and they developed xe "Point Beach" Point Beach in Egg Harbor, around the xe "Alpine" Alpine. They bought and sold xe "Chambers Island" Chambers Island. They had this idea that would be an elegant place for the yachting community! Then he hired xe "Klatt, Mr." Mr. Klatt, a Chicago attorney, and they took options on all of this property. Essentially, Glidden optioned or bought everything from xe "County Road T" County Road T at the south end of Glidden Drive near xe "Wester s Fish House" Wester s Fish House all the way to xe "Schauer Park" Schauer Park in the Town of xe "Jacksonport" Jacksonport, with the exception of the few families who were xe "Whitefish Bay fishermen" Whitefish Bay fishermen. This was 9,000 acres, over 10 miles of shorefront, and included xe "Clark Lake" Clark s Lake. And they had this idea that they were going to have a little private airport and other developments. But this is 28, 29, 30. Glidden platted out the southern part of what is now Glidden Drive, but he owned all this property. He hired the Schmocks who had put the roads in for him down in Indiana to come up here and lend a hand. xe "Schmock, Ewald" Ewald was the younger of several brothers, and with his German wife, xe "Schmock, Babette" Babette, arrived in the 30s. They built the road from where the Fish House is to Whitefish Bay and beyond, past xe "Cave Point" Cave Point and up to Schauer Park. Moss: And now through Bark Road? Brogan: xe "Bark Road" Bark Road was there already. Glidden didn t own it; it belonged to the fishermen: the xe "Ellies" Ellies, the xe "Lauschers" Lauschers. The trick in real estate is not how much you pay for it, or how cheap you buy it, or how much you sell it for, it s how quick you sell it at some profit after you buy it, it s the velocity of the thing. And so, in the Depression, Glidden had financial reverses, he was busted, he couldn t pay his creditors, and he couldn t pay the Schmocks. In the meantime, the Schmocks, as contractors would do at the time, whenever there were remote areas, they would have crews that they would board and feed. They had a camp at xe "Shivering Sands" Shivering Sands Creek. Even though they weren t getting paid, there wasn t much business back in Indiana either, so Ewald and Babette stayed here as agent for his brothers. Glidden passed away in the mid-30s, leaving behind all these claims against his assets. The probate judge made a determination that half of this 9,000 acres was enough to settle the Schmock s claims. And so the judge asked the xe "Schmock Brothers" Schmock brothers, Which half do you want? And the Schmocks said, ll take the half that goes from Whitefish Bay to the south end and back to the woods and timber, because the roads generally stayed there. The roads they built up in the dunes were prone to getting washed away from sand movement. So the judge then awarded the Schmock brothers the Glidden Drive shore and inland areas, back to the farmland. The north half of Glidden s holdings, including Cave Point, Clark Lake, and what eventually became xe "Whitefish Dunes State Park" Whitefish Dunes State Park was bought by some investors from Green Bay. My dad and Ewald were friends. In 1956, Ewald s brothers were on in years; he was suffering from multiple sclerosis, and in a wheelchair. A xe "Minihan, Doctor" Doctor Minihan used to vacation up here and encouraged Ewald to come and borrow the money from the xe "People s Bank of Green Bay" People s Bank of Green Bay to build the Lodge, and take advantage of Babette s good German cooking. Since Ewald was not yet owner of the land, he arranged to get some property from his brothers for the Lodge site, but all the remaining vacant land was still owned by the xe "Schmock Brothers Ice and Coal" Schmock Brothers Ice and Coal. In 56, (Ewald told me) they said, We want to straighten out our affairs here, and will you buy it? And Ewald said, Well, fine, and he paid them $50,000 because Ewald was in a wheelchair, and hadn t sold a lot of lots; he sold some lots in the 30s and 40s, but he hadn t been very aggressive in selling the property. And so he went to the bank, borrowed $50,000 and paid his brothers off, and quickly got very aggressive in selling real estate. Ewald went to my dad, but dad didn t buy it, and died in 59. I came back from Madison and went into the securities business and Ewald was one of my customers. About 1963 I had a pretty good few years in the market, and thought I ought to buy some land in Door County. We still owned the Point down at Lake Forest Park. Moss: But by 1964, how many cottages were there up and down this lake? Brogan: The first cottages were built in the 30s. And then nothing, of course, through World War II. xe "Moyers, Dave" Dave Moyers, who was the Vice Pres xe "Sherman Road" ident of International Harvester, said it took 13 hours, to drive hippity-hoppity up the highway, through xe "Sherman Road" Sherman Road, xe "Green Bay Road" Green Bay Road, up through xe "Racine" Racine, xe "Kenosha" Kenosha, xe "Milwaukee" Milwaukee So a lot of the homes got built after the war and the Korean War, in the mid- 50s. I was in the Lodge one night in January, 1964, a lucky day for me, when Mr. xe "Lauscher" Lauscher brought in the tax bills. They were for what Ewald still owned of the original 4,000 acre tract 2,800 acres or so and it was assessed for $160,000. His tax bill was $1,600, not including the Lodge. Ewald, chewing on a cigar, said, By God, this ain t worth $160,000! He said, d sell it all for $100,000! And xe "Schmock, Babette" Babette, with that southern German accent that many of the people will recall, said, Evald, Evald, mit a hundredt tousend vee cud lif like kings! Moss: And your ears started to perk? Brogan: And I m sitting there in my old Korean War jacket and oh! and so we made our deal, and essentially what I bought was 7,200 feet of shorefront and a strip on the inland side of the road 400 feet deep and about 22,000 feet long. Moss: The curves that we all see today, were they all up and down the road or was it just a straight line? Brogan: No, no, no, this was all put in by the Schmocks, for Orrin Glidden. They carved this road out of the forest. The road is typically 200 some-odd feet from the water. In fact, there are a couple of places that I remember when I was up here hunting in the 50s d hunt ducks up here on the point that the road split and went around a clump of trees. Part of that was esthetics, part of that was they were getting paid for a road and Glidden wanted it to be as small as possible, as cheap as possible. But why so many curves? There are 93 curves on Glidden Drive, when you do your survey points. I had a friend of mine, xe "Fairfield, William" Bill Fairfield, who was writing a book and living at my dad s old hunting shack, and I said to Bill, I ll give you half of it, you just have to raise $7,500 for the $15,000 down payment, so he did the rest on a land contract. We started selling land at $30 a foot on the shorefront and $15 a foot for the inland property. We had 7,200 feet of shorefront, all rock except one sand lot at the south end it was all the lots that Ewald didn t think he could sell. We went to the courthouse and laboriously teased out all the property owner s names on the Drive. Most of the people who bought land down here before we did had stayed at the Lodge. Ewald was so casual about what he had talked to people about, so we sent everyone a letter introducing ourselves and said Ewald can t remember who he made any commitments to, so we re going to give you 90 days to buy before the price goes up. Ewald was selling inland property at $9 a foot and on the shore at $25, and so we will honor any adjacent property owner who wants to either buy inland, in back of his land, or next to it at that price. Some of them did, but others said we were just a bunch of outrageous, high-binding real estate musclers. This was awful, awful, awful, $30 a foot was terrible, a terrible travesty. But by the end of that year we had sold over $150,000 worth of property at that price and with less than 20% of our property sold, we paid off Schmock and we were free and clear. Moss: What about the xe "Glidden Drive access roads" access roads? Brogan: The access roads we put in were the 6-foot walking accesses to the shore to give value to the inland property much as Glidden had reserved those 60 foot outlots down to the shore at the southern end of the Drive for public use. You ll notice that all of our accesses are north of xe "Oak Lane" Oak Lane. We created them for the same reason Glidden created his, so you get attractive properties on the inland side. The inland lots were essentially 200 by 400 feet deep. On the shore, the average depth was set by the road and the average frontage was 165 feet. Moss: Were you getting any advice from any professional groups as to how to manage this or how to set up? Brogan: No, Bill and I had been on xe "Nelson, Gaylord" Gaylord Nelson s staff and so we were familiar with some of the conservation issues in the 1950s and 60s and in looking over the last 40-odd years I don t think we hurt anybody. Moss: I think it was good vision, to see both sides of the road develop the way it did. Brogan: Schmock continued to sell the property in back of the inland lots. The xe "Nature Conservancy" Nature Conservancy now owns a block of it and xe "Baudhuin, Dick" Dick Baudhuin, and so it s not developed. Moss: John, I m struck by your comment that your lots were being sold here originally by you were $30 a running foot on the lake side, and $15 on the inland. What drove the real estate prices over the years? Brogan: Before I bought this property, the peninsula had pockets of xe "St. Louis" St. Louis people, some xe "Chicago" Chicago, some xe "Green Bay" Green Bay, some xe "Milwaukee" Milwaukee and some the xe "Fox Valley" Fox Valley, it was kind of a mixture. In the 30s it took 12 to 13 hours to get from Chicago up here. By the 60s that was down to 6 hours, but still painful going through the small towns, so Wisconsin got federal monies and put the I-43 Interstate highway system through Milwaukee. That cut the travel time down to 5 hours and prices doubled in all of Door County in the fall of 67. So you could come directly at least north of Milwaukee, but then you still had to come up 42 through the small lakeshore communities. The other factor was a feature article in 1969 in the xe "National Geographic" National Geographic, 10-15 pages devoted to the wonders of Door County. Then in the mid-70s you could get on the Interstate in Chicago and up to Green Bay and this cut another hour and a half off; you could do the trip in 4 to 5 hours. Well, the real estate prices doubled again. And I don t think we ll see that big an impact, but we will see an impact this fall or next year when the xe "Interstate" Interstate finally gets from Green Bay up to Sturgeon Bay. So it effectively means now that the Chicago trip will be down to four hours, at least from the north side suburbs to here. I had been appointed to the xe "DNR Board" DNR Board in 1975. We could see what was happening to real estate in these attractive vacation areas. The department had outlined a possible state park in what was left of the dunes that hadn t been sold off, because the original investors had all died and they had never broken the property. So I jumped up and down and said I wouldn t vote for any more small out holding acquisitions until they dealt with the creation of xe "Whitefish Dunes Park" Whitefish Dunes Park. So, through condemnation, the state paid $570,000 for 10,000 feet of shorefront in 1980. And, based on current prices, it would cost over 80 million. Moss: John, thank you, you jumped up and down at just the right moment. Brogan: Yes, I did. But again, the great impact up here, on property values, and on the mixture of people, was the transportation access, the Interstate highway system. And now, Door County has become more and more Chicago people. Moss: John, on some of the early maps, there appeared to be a road running alongside the water near xe "Goldenrod Lane" Goldenrod Lane. Could you tell us what was going on there? Brogan: When Glidden and the Schmocks built Glidden Drive from the south and got to Goldenrod, they went out to the edge of the lake and came back inland farther north at what is now White Pine Lane. The lake is not to be tempted and it tends to go up and down, in fact its peak to low is about 6 feet. They built the road when the lake was down, it came up, and bang! No more road. Rather than trying to fix that, they simply went back in the woods and swamp and cut the Drive where it is now. Glidden was a private road of course when Glidden had it in the 30s. Ewald was on the County Board, and he also served as Sevastopol Town Chairman, so in the 30s they dedicated the road to the Town. But the County had a north-south road further in, in the farm country, so Ewald did a swap. The County took Glidden Drive, named it xe "County RoadT" County Highway T and the Town got the better, improved road with less maintenance costs. So that s why this is a County Trunk and that s why it was not deeded, it was an easement road, narrower and twistier than a normal County Trunk, and yet the County must pave and plow it. Moss: When was it designated a xe "Rustic Road" Rustic Road? Brogan: That s back in the 60s. My partner, Bill, and I worked on that. The rustic road designation is a state designation that simply means it s on the state tourist maps as one of the more scenic roads. It gives certain protections in that it s more difficult for local units of government to start widening straightening it. Moss: I want to say thanks, John, on behalf of the Glidden Drive residents for your contribution not only today but back through the years. Moss: This is Len Moss from Glidden Drive Sherman Bay Normal.dot Sherman Bay Microsoft Word 9.0 Unisys Moss: This is Len Moss from Glidden Drive Title Microsoft Word Document MSWordDoc Word.Document.8