Looking Back: 100 years ago, local volunteers take care of Mt. McSauba
CHARLEVOIX — Remember a few years ago when the combined Covid/supply chain problem sent the price of eggs into the stratosphere, and inflation began its sudden, ugly climb?
Same thing happened 150 years ago, at least in Cheboygan.
Charlevoix Sentinel, Jan. 17, 1874: “The Cheboygan Independent says that dealers in that town charge fifty cents a dozen for eggs, and refuse to certify to their moral character even at that price.” Fifty cents in 1874 was the equivalent of almost $14 today. Editor Willard A. Smith gave no indication that Charlevoix or the immediate region might have been afflicted with the same financial jolt.
Fifty years later, the Jan. 16, 1924 Courier reported that the winter sports area surrounding Mount McSauba was much larger than it is today, at least as far as configuration for skiing goes. It wasn’t until toward the end of the decade that further development gave it the beginning of today’s layout, when a winter sports festival was established that also featured ski jumping, ice hockey and tobogganing.
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“FINE SKI RUN ON MT. MCSAUBA. Fans Have Been Busy Clearing Away Brush. Nothing Is Needed To Make a Perfect Winter Playground Except Co-Operation. A devoted band of local enthusiasts were out on Mt. McSauba Sunday morning, busy clearing away brush to make one of the best ski runs in northern Michigan.
“Starting at a point just west of the (Coast Guard lookout) tower, the track shoots straight down at an angle of about 40 degrees for over a hundred yards. Then a short level run to be taken at only slightly diminished speed and another drop, followed closely by another and ending far down among the trees near the lake shore, a thrilling minute or two of birdlike swooping at express train speed; then the not-too-strenuous climb to the top to begin again.
“Another run, much longer than this, is planned to start from the tower down the northeastern slope of the big hill which offers even better opportunities of development, as it affords a much longer trip. But it takes a little ‘elbow grease’ to put it across so if you want to enjoy the kind of sport that brings crowds to St. Moritz in the Bavarian Alps, to St. Paul and Colorado Springs every winter and in almost equal measure with what those places have to offer in the way of a ski run, get your well-sharpened ax or your shovel and hike out to the mountain early Sunday afternoon and help the boys clean the brush off the run.
“If it once gets noised about that we have skiing here of the first order, right near town, it will not be long before our resorter friends will sit up and take notice and maybe a few will venture up this way to see what it is all about.
“If we really have something here, it is highly possible, as it has been proven in other places, that visitors will keep coming year by year in steadily increasing numbers for stays of more or less duration and gradually we shall have developed a winter season.
“There is no reason in the world why this should not be. We have all the natural advantages and a Charlevoix winter is a vastly different proposition from one in St. Louis, Cincinnati or Chicago. Beautiful clean snow, fine bracing air and a restful stillness impossible in the larger centers form a combination that should prove very attractive to the week-ender or vacationist from the big towns.
“But we’ve got to co-operate to develop our natural advantages to the fullest extent. Let’s see a big crowd out next Sunday afternoon.”
The comparison of Mt. McSauba to St. Moritz and Colorado Springs, to the Alps and the Rockies, is more than a little bit of wishful thinking, an overenthusiastic, chauvinistic look through rose-tinted glasses. Dream on.
It wasn’t until three decades later that a visionary named Everett Kircher gained possession of a much larger hill east of Boyne City to establish an actual ski run served by a ski lift, the first in Northern Michigan. Almost everyone thought he was crazy, only look what happened — Boyne Country.
At least Charlevoix still has Mt. McSauba, officially reestablished in 1956, and still going strong. It has been called the smallest ski run in Michigan. Tongue in cheek, I like to tell visitors that didn’t stop us, that thinking big we put the slope in contention for a recent winter Olympics, only to lose by a few votes to Salt Lake City. Oh, well.
This article originally appeared on The Petoskey News-Review: Looking Back: 100 years ago, local volunteers take care of Mt. McSauba
