Part V - Government, a supplement to the Big Rapids Pioneer Newspaper. Used with permission.
HARDWOODS A SAVIOR AFTER EXHAUSTION OF PINE FORESTS
By Jim Brusskotter - Managing Editor
At the turn of the century, Big Rapids' Leaders were scratching for new ways to provide jobs for the citizenry as the flood of pine logs down the river and via area railroads was rapidly coming to an end as the great virgin pine forests were nearly exhausted.
The savior came from the area's stands of hard wood as Big Rapids and other area communities turned to manufacturing products from maple, beech, oak, ash and other native hardwoods.
At or near the beginning of the 21st century four industries emerged on the city's eastside industrial lands that would help maintain the city's industrial base for many years to come ... the Big Rapids Broom Company, the Ward Brothers and Jones and Green flouring mills, and the Hood and Wright veneer factory.
Jones and Green actually emerged well before the turn of the century when William T. JOnes left a successful lumber business in Morley and took up a similar business in Big Rapids at a time when the exodus of jobs due to a declining logging industry was just beginning.
Jones had served four years as a state legislator while in Morley awnd in 1896 began a 16-year stint as Mecosta County's probate judge.
Meanwhile he had teamed up with George W. Green to purchase a stave mill on the north side of East Maple Street where Jones immediately convested to a planing mill and a sash, door and blind company that was running at full capacity by the time Green sold his interest to his son Williard in 1898.
Then in 1902, the new partners changed part of the mill into a flooring factory, enlarged the facility and installed the most efficient macinery possible and it wasn't long before the flooring end of the business was thriving with an output of 15,000 feet a day.
A narrow gauge railroad was installed throughout the multiple building complex to carry the flooring from one stage to the next.
In 1906-07 the reputation of Jones and Green flooring had created such a demand that the partners built another mill at Dighton (Osceola County) where they employed another 50 men and produced another 6 million feet a year until it burned down in 1915.
During this period of time, Jones and Green flooring was sold in every state in the union and even in Liverpool, England.
The business to continued to operate as a lumber yard in later years until a huge fire on April 29. 1953.
The Ward Brothers mawple flooring plant began in 1895 as a hardwood sawmill operated by H.J. Ward and J.O. Lumsden on the east bank of the Muskegon River.
For years they manufactured wood for use in wooden bicycle rims and handle bars.
When Lumsden retired in 1899, Frank M. and brother Dr. C. Austin Ward came into the partnership and geban producing hardwood flooring. In 1902 they built a multi-building horseshoe shaped complex as a spur of the Grand Rapids Indiana Railroad with the line running past the ends of ther complex to carry products from one end to the other.
By 1916, the Ward Brothers operation also was recognized as one of the best flooring mills mills in the country, but by that time they were already having to travel further and further way from the initial local sources of wood.
In that year the company was employing 80 men and turning out a car-load of maple flooring a day with a storage capacity of 1.5 million feet in its warehouse.
Most of the company's products were going to New England states where maple was too scarce to support the operation of a flooring plant.
By 1919 the Hood and Wright veneer factory has a $100,000 annual output from facilities that bordered both sides of Baldwin street just east of the Baldwin Street Bridge.
The multi-building complex and yards stretched south along the Muskegon River for one half mile and had spurs of bothe the Grand Rapids and Indiana and Pere Marquette railroads passing through the yards to provide incoming logs and outgoing veneer.
Under the guidance of George A. Wright and Fred E. Hood, the business grew from its beginning in 1895 to become a veneer sought out by buyers of the product because of the company's reputation for excellence.
By 1916, the firm could not keep up with all the orders as the company was using many kinds of domestic and foreign woods to produce veneer of all types with the entire output normally made on order.
According to a 1919 Pioneer article, the logs in the yard of Hood and Wright would have reached from Big Rapids to Kalamazoo if stretched end to end with the plant consuming abiout 30,000 logs or about one million feet per year.
At the time, the factory was buying a large volume of logs from local people with as many as 50 sleigh-loads of logs coming in each day.
The article also pointed out that Hood was in charge of the general direction of the plant while Wright used his sales experience with a similar Hood and Gale factory in Warren, Penn. to guide sales of the product.
The factory was in operation until a fire on May 1, 1944 that leveled the veneer plant.
The Big Rapids Broom Factory was operated by Charles Froman who came here in 1909 from Richmond, Va because of inducements offered by the board of trade and because of excellent labor prospects.
By 1911 he was operating his business from a new two story brick building of 150 feet by 35 feet located along the Grand Rapids and Indiana tracks on the city's east side.
His labor force was all demale with some 25 girls working six to eight hour shifts attaching southern broom corn to maple broom handles.
The yearly output was about $15,000 with 72,000 brooms going from Big Rapids to points in Michigan and south.
Froman had operated broom factories in three other states and in Mancelona before coming to Big Rapids.
Return to Mecosta sesquicentennial Page
Return to Home Page