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The Northern Michigan photograph collection contains an assortment of 43 photographic postcards, 28 mounted photographs, and 6 unmounted photographs showing people and scenes related to logging camp operations in northern Michigan, street views most likely from the town of Trenary, and road construction between Rapid River and Masonville.

The Northern Michigan photograph collection contains an assortment of 43 photographic postcards, 28 mounted photographs, and 6 unmounted photographs showing people and scenes related to logging camp operations in northern Michigan, street views most likely from the town of Trenary, and road construction between Rapid River and Masonville.

Per Albert Peterson (1886-1968), grandfather of collection donor Anne Peterson, is identified in two photographs. It is unclear whether members of the Peterson family took any of these photographs themselves. According to occasional annotations (many of which are not contemporary to when the photographs were taken), members of the “Johnson” family, including Oscar Johnson, John Johnson, and Manny Johnson, are the most frequently represented individuals. One group portrait of loggers is captioned “Wessling Johnson Camp” while another is captioned “Harry Schmit Camp 14.” Several postcards are addressed to an Eva Bannister located in Winters, Michigan, and a Henry Roos of Rapid River and Blaney, Michigan.

Depictions of logging camp operations include several group portraits that illustrate the size of a typical early 20th-century logging camp. A few images also highlight the cookhouse and social side of camp life, while there is also one photograph that shows the first motorized tractor used in log transport in the region. Other images show aspects of town and domestic life in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula from approximately 1908 to 1920. There are group portraits of railroad workers, ice cutters, maple sap gatherers, a baseball team; family members at home or being pulled in dog sleighs; and scenes of town life including a parade that appears to involve individuals dressed in blackface, an early movie theater, a fire engine, and a train crossing. One group portrait appears to have been taken around the 1940s.

A sequence of 13 photographic postcards provides a detailed overview of the stages of rural road construction in the early 1920s including views of trains unloading material onto conveyors, narrow-gauge gravel trains delivering materials to the work site, work crews and horse-drawn graders contouring the surface, and steamrollers compressing the roadbed. The postcards include brief annotations typewritten on the front of the cards.

The Upper Michigan vacation photograph album contains approximately 125 photographs and 1 program related to summer vacations in northern Michigan and the Upper Peninsula.

The Upper Michigan vacation photograph album contains approximately 125 photographs and 1 program related to summer vacations in northern Michigan and the Upper Peninsula. The album (25.2 x 21 cm) is half bound in burgundy leather with black cloth boards. Photographs of interest include views of tent camping on the shores of Brevort Lake in Mackinac County, with outdoor cooking, picnics, local Ojibwa guides operating a boat named the "John Boucher", fishing and boating, berry picking, and a group of Ojibwa Indians including "Chief Tail Feather" performing for the camera; snapshots of "Old Mr. Massey, the Blacksmith of Brevoort," inside his log cabin; and the exterior of the cabin of Frank Budney, trapper and guide, with snow shoes and a hand-made grinding wheel. Mackinac Island-related photos show the fort and Arch Rock. Also included are photographs taken on the Detroit River showing a revenue cutter (the USS Yantic) and a sailing ship loaded with lumber; there is one photograph of the railroad ferry Saint Marie, and one photograph of the locks at Sault Ste. Marie. Many photos have manuscript captions and are dated.

Also present is a laid in program from the 1890 Columbus (Ohio) High School Graduation ceremony.