Looking Back: The boom of Booth Fisheries
One hundred years ago, the Nov. 15, 1922, Charlevoix Courier devoted a very large amount of column space to the completion and opening of the new downtown Booth Fisheries building.
Construction had begun a year earlier, was completed in January, then custom fitting of fish-packing, storage, and office rooms plus other working spaces took until September, until the state-of-the-art facility was ready for business two months later.
“BIG INDUSTRY IN NEW QUARTERS. Booth Fisheries Co. Occupies Modern Plant. Enterprise of A-1 Proportions Has Been Developing for Many Years. Unsuspected by the many and only partially realized by the few, an enterprise of really first class proportions has recently entered its quarters on the (south) shores of Round Lake and this move has served to bring to light the true extent of the operations which the concern in question--the Booth Fisheries Company, has been quietly carrying on for many years.
“For a considerable time, the Booth Company officials (based in Chicago) have recognized the fact that their rapidly growing business in this region demanded newer and more commodious quarters, a more accessible location and more up-to-date equipment than they possessed.”
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They had been leasing a lakeside building on Lake Charlevoix, north of the train depot in the area currently occupied by the C & O Club. They now would enjoy 160 feet of front dockage on Round Lake.
“The buildings are painted an attractive yellow trimmed with red—the Booth standard color scheme which is carried out throughout all their branches, even to the boats they operate and the tools used in their different plants.
“State and Federal inspectors, who have visited the new plant since the commencement of operations on November 1st, are all agreed that this is the most complete and modern fish packing plant they have found anywhere on the Great Lakes.
“When the catches are landed at the docks, the fish have already been cleaned; this work being performed on the return trip from the fishing grounds. The heads are left on. A fair day’s catch for a fish tug is anywhere from 1,500 to 3,000 pounds of fish. Some days, the total of seventy thousand pounds passes over the (fish weigher’s) scales. Here, the heads are removed from the largest fish, and then, together with the smaller sizes of ‘mediums,’ the heads of which are left on, they go to a big bin, occupying almost the entire side of the packing-room where, packed in galvanized iron freezing pans, they are buried in a great mass of crushed ice and rock salt and remain there from ten to fourteen hours until frozen so stiff that one could hardly dent them with a chisel.
“From the freezing bin, the fish go to the ‘operating’ table, where they are dipped in ice water to form a thin coating of ice on them before they are stored away. Next, they are stacked in the storage rooms in piles according to sizes."
The three freezing/storage rooms “are built with a double wall, the space between the partitions being tightly packed with mill shavings (largely sawdust) and lined with heavy insulating paper. The doors are built in the same manner, only cork is used for insulation instead of shavings. Next to cork, which is the best but most expensive, these shavings represent the most efficient non-conductor of heat known to science for practical commercial purposes.
“Lining the inside walls of these store-rooms are wedge-shaped containers, called ice cans, filled with crushed ice and salt which maintains a fairly even temperature within the rooms of from fourteen to eighteen degrees above zero, Fahrenheit. This keeps the stored fish properly preserved until time for shipment.”
Imagine stepping into one of these rooms on a hot summer’s day.
“The ice storage room is two floors deep and has a capacity of twelve hundred tons. A full year’s supply was put up last winter. At the present time, this storage room is filled with frosty cakes to a depth of eight feet."
All this new environment plus the modern technologies installed, “ ... make it possible for the Booth company to double the tonnage handled in the old plant with about the same amount of floor space.” On the second floor, wooden boxes awaiting packing and shipping were piled ceiling high.
Within the two weeks from Nov. 1 to the writing to the Courier article, Booth had gone through “forty tons of rock salt, of a grade a little coarser than ice cream salt, and four hundred and fifty tons of ice have been used.
“The territory covered by the Charlevoix branch of the Booth company includes Charlevoix, the Beavers, Northport, Leland, Petoskey and Harbor Springs. For Booth Fisheries alone, this distance has produced over a quarter of a million pounds of fish during the last two weeks. Eleven craft are engaged in the industry out of Charlevoix alone; five at Leland; ten at Northport and about forty at the Beavers. The principal catch is lake trout. These fish form the backbone of the business.”
Booth itself operated no fishing boats. They were buyers and packers only. Independent shippers then took over. The frozen fish packed here could reach as far as Pittsburgh, Denver, Duluth and Memphis.
Ironically, at the same time of this enormous update, the fisheries of the Great Lakes stood on the brink of precipitous decline from decades of wasteful overfishing, and Booth was forced to leave Charlevoix not long after. Once World War II was over, the building was turned into Bellinger Marine Services where it remained until the mid 1990s to make way for John Winn’s enormous boathouse/residence.
Correction: Two weeks ago, Looking Back congratulated the gourmet Rowe Inn near Ellsworth on its 50th anniversary. This was based upon the existence of the Rowe’s websites, which indicate the restaurant is still in business. It has been learned that the Rowe closed not too long ago and the contents of its magnificent wine cellar sold. Our apologies for any confusion this may have caused.
This article originally appeared on The Petoskey News-Review: Looking Back: The boom of Booth Fisheries
