Muskegon: Lumber Queen of the World

In the summer of eighteen sixty-seven, thirty-two sawmills were running simultaneously along the shores of Muskegon Lake, their blades screaming through white pine logs that had floated down the Muskegon River from forests stretching fifty miles to the east and north. Chicago newspapers called the town the Lumber Queen of the World, and it was not an exaggeration.

The first sawmill had opened in eighteen thirty-seven on the lake's eastern shore, and the first cargo of sawn lumber left the harbor two years later on a small schooner called the Victor. But the industry only truly erupted after the Civil War. The Muskegon Booming Company was formed in eighteen sixty-four to sort and raft the logs, chaining them into tight bundles and towing them by tugboat to the mills. Over the next thirty years the company handled more than ten billion board feet of timber. Chicago was rebuilding constantly, and Muskegon was supplying the raw material.

The wealth that poured through this city touched everything. By the late eighteen sixties, six thousand people lived here, and more arrived every season. Lumber barons built Queen Anne mansions on the bluffs above the lake. Elaborate churches went up. The streets filled with boardinghouses, saloons, and dry goods stores serving the mill workers.

Then Charles Hackley changed the story. Hackley arrived from New England, made a fortune in the mills, and watched the forests disappear. When his last mill closed in eighteen ninety-four, he did not leave. He gave the city a park, a hospital, a public library, a school, and a museum. He recruited Brunswick and other manufacturers to replace the vanished sawmills. Other lumber barons simply moved on; Hackley stayed and rebuilt.

Muskegon retooled as an industrial city, producing office furniture, knitting machines, and later foundry equipment for the auto industry. The great Victorian downtown that tourists now admire was built on pine money and saved by a man who understood that a city's character is made in how it handles its decline as much as its rise.