Racing to the Bottom

January, 2015.

One of my exploring partners is a Windsor-area native who has since moved to Newfoundland and become homesick, so when he comes back to visit during x-mas, he always wants to go on some cockamamie roadtrip, which I am always more than happy to oblige. This time around Navi and I were headed back to Saginaw, despite some atrocious winter weather beginning to unfurl.

Out of sheer laziness I am going to jump directly onto Navi's coattails for the research on this one, since he already put together a well-done blog post about our day in Saginaw. Normally researchers get pretty cranky about this kind of blatant copy-catting, but I happen to know that Navi is easily bought-off, and his searing-hot Canadian wrath easily assuaged with just a couple 40oz beers.

I hadn't realized that this horse raceway at the Saginaw County Fairgrounds was formerly a baseball stadium that had been partially demolished; I was merely going on a tip from Rattler, a Bay City friend of mine who said that it was here and worth checking out.

According to Navi's research, it also had its origin as a dirt oval track that was built in the early 1900s by the Saginaw Car Club. The auto enthusiasts built a wooden grandstand to accompany their track, and the property was soon rented by the Saginaw County Fair starting in 1913. The original grandstand was demolished and rebuilt in 1920, then replaced in 1941 with the current structure we see here.

This desolate street was almost covered in snow, and the whipping winds made us seek shelter inside the big grandstand building. Neither one of us had had our morning coffee yet as I recall, so this was a pretty harsh way to begin an early Saturday morning on the road.

Following years saw this venue's use as a minor league baseball stadium for various teams. Among them were the Saginaw Athletics of the Michigan State League, who called this field home in 1940. The Saginaw White Sox of the c.1900 International League or the Saginaw Aces of the c.1919-1925 Michigan-Ontario League may have also played here at this venue Navi postulates, but he wasn't able to find any confirmation online.

Navi says that the Michigan State League ended up folding during WWII due to wartime shortages of men and disposable income on the homefront. By war's end however baseball was coming back to Saginaw in full force, and it required the construction of a separate stadium, leaving this property to become the permanent county fairgrounds, which was so well established that it even bragged that it was the "best attended county fair east of the Mississippi," with an attendance of 350,000 over the course of the seven-day event.

Here at the main entrance, I noticed restroom doors that were your old wooden five-panel style, which was a quaint throwback:

The Rust Belt decline of Saginaw also drove the decline of the Saginaw County Fair, which only drew 6,000 attendees in 2001, its last year on these grounds before moving to Chesaning. Even at its new location in Chesaning, the attendance figures only get to about 26,000, perhaps showing that county fairs just aren't as big of a thing as they were back in the old days.

In 1980 the Saginaw Harness Raceway reopened this venue for use as a horse track, although it closed down again in 2005 when the question of allowing "racinos" (gambling on televised races) failed to pass in the Michigan legislature.

Many of the old sheds and other outbuildings associated with the old county fairgrounds have been demolished, and the property is owned by the Saginaw Housing Commission, who are apparently trying to find a use or a market for the parcel. The ideas so far have ranged from selling it to private developers, building low-income housing, or making it a park.

So far it doesn't sound like there is any intent to keep this place around as a venue with a grandstand or racetrack.

Navi says that most of the internet hits regarding this site are oriented toward its history as the county fairgrounds, and that there are many people who miss the fair being here rather than the race track.

Of course I climbed up to the catwalk that led into the press box...

It was a weird, floating sensation being up here.

The rooms were mostly empty, but it was clear that they had been used for broadcasting and other media uses.

It was in this room, housed in the shelving bracket seen here, that I believe the "photo finish" camera was housed:

That would of course be the special camera that was used to determine the results of very close races.

Out to the right you can see that the curved, banked track had become quite overgrown:

This was probably the last standing stables:

Out in the infield, the long scoreboard building can be seen, and what I think is a public housing tower in the distance:

A horseshoe, perhaps a lucky one, that had fallen from its place above a door:

Another media suite:

There was a lot of cable and film developing apparatus still strewn around.

Down next to the grandstand was an area dedicated to the placing of bets and the acquiring of adult beverages...

Inside was sort of a combination of old decor and a fancy modern paint job.

"Gentlemen, place your bets..."

"Gentlemen, hang your coats..."

Results board:

We decided to walk out to the infield, to check out the building that housed the scoreboard.

It was right about here that I was really wishing we had managed to get coffee before trying all this snow-trudgery.

Inside...

After departing the old fairgrounds, we took a tour through a section of downtown Saginaw that I had not really examined before.

Several fancy old brick buildings stood vacant, but due to the declining weather situation and the fact that we had business to attend to in Midland County, I decided to pass up messing with any of these for now, since everything seemed well sealed.

This was a part of Saginaw that I hadn't really spent any time in before...I wasn't sure how I had missed it.

Deserted streets, in the face of the impending snowstorm...

References:

http://brnation.net/lifestyle_2015_01_saginawmilllers_p1.html

Yoopee 2013, Pt. 1: “Big Chief Coal”

August, 2013.

Unfortunately I was limited to just one trip up north in 2013. I had not been up north since the epic trip I took with Navi back in October of 2012. However, this time I would have the benefit of a place to stay in Centennial, just outside of Calumet. With a home base in the middle of the Keweenaw, I would be sitting in a very good position to launch all kinds of missions.

On the way I also was hoping to check out the ruins of a coal mine in Saginaw County. There were other places I wanted to get to in Alpena County, and I had also been mulling a return trip to Mackinac Island for the first time since I was like six years old. For one, because of my newfound interest in War of 1812 history, and secondly because I had lately noticed a photo of an abandoned-looking historic mansion on the north shore of the island.

Along my way north, I came across this ancient looking house near Clio (said “CLYE-oh”), probably built in the mid-1800s:

Not seeing any easy way in, and due to the fact that the sun was setting rapidly, I continued to my intended destination. It was on the outskirts of St. Charles that the sparse couple ruins of the Robert Gage Coal Mine #8 were still standing, in a large wooded tract that had been converted into the Hartley Nature Center.

Happily, they embraced the history that was on the land instead of carelessly eradicating the ruins there; in fact they curated it to a great extent. There were some other farmsteads and things to see, but with daylight fading I did not have time to see it all. My main interest was to see the last remnants of Michigan’s lost coal mining industry.

Saginaw County was once the center of what was predicted to become a leading coal producing industry, but never panned out. There were other coal regions in Michigan, embracing a total of 10 counties and over 150 shafts, but the main concentrations were in Ingham, Jackson, Saginaw, and Bay Counties.

I arrived and quickly hit the trail. It didn’t take me long before I found ruins.

According to info passed on to me by Ashcat, a fellow forum member on CopperCountryExplorer.com, the mining of coal in Michigan dates from the mid-1830s when the mining of soft coal deposits found in south-central Michigan began in Jackson. From the time accurate recordkeeping began in 1860, a total of over 42.2 million tons of coal were mined in Michigan, with the industry hitting its peak in 1907 and drying up by 1920. Saginaw County's Swan Creek Mine held out until 1952, but that was the end, except for a brief period of strip mining near Williamston in the 1970s.

Ashcat also mentions that the railroads—perhaps the largest buyers of coal—offered discriminating rates in favor of the older coal fields of Ohio and Pennsylvania, which held back the marketing of Michigan coal. Most of the coal mines in Michigan were from 50 to 350 feet deep (extremely shallow, as mines go) and most of the mines were entered from a vertical shaft. Some mines were only 30 feet deep and one in the Saginaw-Bay City area was 65.

I don’t know what any of these structures are, but I think this was a powerhouse?

I am also quite disappointed in the quality of most of these pics, but oh well.

Here’s the shafthouse:

According to a historical plaque nearby, the highest grade of bituminous coal in Michigan was mined here at the Robert Gage Co. “Big Chief” Mine #8 from 1917 to 1931, when coal began to fall out of favor and competition from the higher grades of coal found in other states forced it to shut down. The shaft is 200 feet deep.

Not sure what this is, but it looks like a shaft collar…?

It was filled in anyway.

I continued northward toward Alpena County, where limestone is king. I had been in contact with a Captain Mike about a trip to Middle Island to help do restoration work on the old lighthouse there, and we were going to take a stab at it for tomorrow.

CLICK for part 2


References:
http://hartley.sisd.cc/mine8/BayCity_News_article/body_baycity_news_article.html