From the Archives: Preserving history: Faye Swanberg’s legacy

You don’t have to turn around twice at the Alger County Heritage Center Archives to put your hand on a file that was created by Faye Swanberg. Faye spent most of her adult years recording and researching Alger County history with the skill and determination of a bloodhound at a pace that one would put into a full-time job. 

In fact, Faye resigned from a remunerative opportunity to dedicate her time to this cause. Faye passed away in 2004, and there are still nuggets of her representative work that turn up in unexpected places, which means in undocumented files and undocumented means that the piece needs to be accessioned — in other words, a number and a description must be assigned and logged into a computer program exclusive to the recording of artifacts and files.

Faye was a charter member of the historical society and, with the unclipped wings of an angel, made it her personal mission to research local history. She interviewed dozens of Alger residents, mostly sitting comfortably at their kitchen tables, recording these recollections of past times that would be forever lost if it hadn’t been for this determined, petite woman who most would have considered shy and quiet, certainly soft-spoken. 

In 1976, Faye wrote an article for The Munising News informing readers of the historic sites that society members had diligently marked around the county in commemoration of our nation’s bicentennial. She began the list of sites receiving an interpretive sign board by an explanation of the construction of early state roads built in Alger County, both being necessitated by the new iron ore industry on the Marquette Range.

The first of these roads was the Sault Ste. Marie and Grand Island State Road Extension. This road, constructed in 1873 from Marquette to Bay Furnace, was extended to Old Munising in 1875, known locally as the Old State Road. These early roads meandered through unbroken wilderness to halfway houses or way stations and played an important role in our early history as they provided primitive shelter for mail carriers and travelers. 

Interpretive signage was provided for two of Alger’s way stations, one being placed on the crest of Deer Lake Hill in Onota Township, just off M-28. Here a crude log halfway house was open to wayfarers at Laughing Whitefish River to provide protection for travelers using the road in good weather and the frozen riverbed in the winter months.

A second road that just sliced into Alger County, the Bay de Noc and Lake Superior State Road, initiated what we know as U.S. 41 today between Marquette and Bay de Noc on Lake Michigan. A sign board was placed approximately 2.5 miles south of Kiva overlooking the Whitefish River, the abandoned site of a log-hewn blockhouse and barn that once quartered fresh relay horses for drovers getting Nebraska longhorn cattle to western Marquette County for the purpose of providing fresh meat for the miners.

In 1880, the Union Fuel Co. began to build batteries of charcoal kilns at Onota, Whitefish and Rock Kilns in Onota Township in anticipation of a railroad with service between Marquette and the Straits that would be completed in 1881. At the Rock Kilns, a marker was placed at the grave site of the three Trudell children who died during the diphtheria epidemic in 1855; society members deemed it worthy of a marker as a poignant scene of grief so common to our pioneers. By 1896, the charcoal kilns, of which remnants still stand, were snuffed out by the depletion of the hardwood in that area. The families living there turned to farming in the southern part of the county, settling in Limestone, Mathias and Rock River townships.

Faye provided readers with a description of the historic aspect of Au Train, an age-old resting place for weary lake travelers from the earliest times. Au Train became the county seat in 1885 with Faye surmising little change to the quiet village since the days wagons rumbled across sandy trails and lumberjacks splintered the boardwalks with their caulked boots.

Another of the historical markers was placed on deep forest land 2.5 miles south of Christmas at the site of an experimental logging camp, which provided the setting of a progressive school of forestry begun in 1909 by Thomas Wyman. This institution closed after the students were drawn away by the start of World War I and did not open again due to the lack of finances following the war.

The white graveyard, the resting place of Abraham Williams and his descendents on Grand Island, received a sign as well as the Williams’ Fur Traders building that was moved to the mainland and sat behind the county jail until it was moved to Washington Street, where it now occupies a space on the grounds of the Heritage Center and is open to visitors there.

The Wetmore Cemetery on H-13 was marked as a site commemorating the early years of that village, considered to be an important center on the route between the Sault and Marquette. Overnight lodging was provided in a small cabin that could accommodate six men and their sled dogs, but fell into disuse once the railroad was built across the peninsula in 1881.

A charcoal kiln was erected on the southern bank of Cox Pond, once an active camping site of Indians moving on the divide of the peninsula where the waters flow both north to Lake Superior and south to Lake Michigan. Faye related that Wetmore became a critical point on the railroad and headquarters for numerous logging companies, making the little town a hub of activity.

Indiantown, formerly known as Thomasville, located just off H-58, east of Munising, also received a marker. The signage remembered the historic final struggle of the Grand Island-Munising Band of Chippewas to survive as a community. The band retreated from their village on the eastern shore of Munising Bay (the current site of Washington School/ACHS Heritage Center) as farming seemed to be their one possible means of survival, but after 15 years of marginal success, tribe members began to drift away. 

A historic marker was placed east of Grand Marais on the roadbed of one of the first logging railroads in Michigan and the United States, built in 1879. The sign also encouraged visitors to experience the nearby restored lighthouse, mountainous sand dunes and the old log slide.

It is no surprise that so many of the remnants of historic habitation and activity have been destroyed, decayed or replaced by progressive settlement and needs. Faye said it best when she wrote that most of these places have been “concealed by the passing of time.”

Many, if not all, of these wooden historical markers once so thoughtfully and proudly placed around the county have, sadly, also succumbed to the passing of time due to decay, vandalism and lack of attention. Metal markers that are mounted on heavy poles were and still are price-prohibitive today for a small historical society that depends on donations to exist.

Geocaching has become a popular activity and would be a way to permanently tag these sites, especially the most remote, for coming years. ACHS invites anyone who has knowledge of coordinates, GPS trackers and an interest in preserving local history to reach out to us as a project most worthy of our support.

Many of these places once commemorated are easily explored today even without these historical marker boards as guides. Let this article encourage you to do so.

You also can read about these sites and many more in the society’s publication of “Alger County’s Centennial History 1885-1985,” a hardcover book available at the Heritage Center on Washington Street. In its acknowledgements, the book recognizes it was promoted and published as a team effort, but cites no other but Faye Swanberg’s efforts in providing the inspiration and leadership as the much needed effort that saw the entire project to its completion.

Alger County Historical Society is most grateful that in 2024, NMU’s Beaumier U.P. Heritage Center in Marquette honored Faye Swanberg, posthumously, as one of their 60 recipients nominated as Extraordinary Women of the U.P. of Michigan in a special exhibit on campus that is now touring each county by turns.

The center recognized its honorees as women who share a legacy of great accomplishments in their careers, volunteerism and community service. Without the combined efforts of Faye and her support team starting in 1966 with the formation of the historical society, knowledge and documentation of our local lore and cultural beginnings would also have met with the same fate as the signboards now lying in pieces and mostly scattered.