Article

Ernest Green, the homecoming Grand Marshall

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MSU homecoming Grand Marshall, Ernest Green, sat in on a special screening of the documentary The Road to Little Rock. The documentary tells the courageous story of one visionary judge and nine determined teenagers who are now known as The Little Rock Nine. Ernest Green, who was one of the nine students that were a part of this historic movement and subject of the film, talked about his groundbreaking time at Michigan State. “Any student coming here should see this as a lifetime opportunity and its more than going to classes, it’s getting to know people and building relationships,” said Green.

Environment

Shining lights on Great Lakes history

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By JOSH BENDER
Capital News Service
LANSING — Three Lake Superior lighthouses, including one in the Upper Peninsula, were recently added to the National Register for Historic Places. The Presque Isle Harbor Breakwater Light was built in 1941 to assist in shipping out iron ore mined in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, according to U.S .Coast Guard historian Daniel Koski-Karell, who applied to get the lighthouses added to the register. Standing in Presque Isle Harbor, the light is still used for this purpose today. The harbor is the ninth-busiest in the Great Lakes, according to the National Register application. In addition to shipping out iron ore, the harbor receives freighters bearing coal to fuel the Presque Isle Power Plant.

Arts & Entertainment

Michigan gets four Historic Place designations

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By ERIC FREEDMAN
Capital News Service
LANSING — The roster of Lower Peninsula sites on the National Register of Historic Places has grown by four with new designations in Saugatuck, Elk Rapids, Alpena and Detroit. Among them are a 1904 pump house and a turn-of-the-20th-century church, both now serving as local history museums.

“The National Register is the official list of the nation’s historic places worthy of preservation,” according to the National Park Service (NPS), which administers the program. Sites must be significant “in American history, architecture, archeology, engineering and culture” and “possess integrity of location, design, setting, materials, workmanship, feeling and association.”
Under NPS guidelines, they are “associated with events that have made a significant contribution to the broad patterns of our history or with the lives of significant persons in our past.”
In West Michigan, the brick Saugatuck Pump House on the bank of the Kalamazoo River marks where Saugatuck developed its water system after devastating fires wiped out a hotel and other buildings. No organized fire department existed at the time, and the village was gaining popularity as a tourist destination, connected by steamship to Chicago and by rail to Grand Rapids, according to the nomination. The building was abandoned in the 1930s because its pumping and generating functions were inadequate, and it was later renovated as a cottage by private tenants.

Arts & Entertainment

Book explores mining, logging company towns of the Upper Peninsula

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By ERIC FREEDMAN
Capital News Service
LANSING — They were shaped by the mines, forests and quarries of the Upper Peninsula — and by the companies that owned those resources. They were communities that drew workers to the UP from across the globe in search of jobs and opportunities. And today they’re largely gone. Some, like Ford River, Nahma and Pequaming, still rate a pinprick on the official Michigan Department of Transportation highway map. Some, like Simmons, Shelldrake and Emerson are nowhere to be found on that map, even with a magnifying glass.