Saving the “historical gateway to the entire Keweenaw” – the Ford Alberta Sawmill

Henry Ford once had a rich empire of logging in the UP, and much of it has been lost due to modernization. Yet, a dusty gem shoved into the village of Alberta, just outside L’Anse, Mich. was preserved perfectly. The Ford Alberta sawmill, currently owned by Michigan Tech, is in danger of being destroyed. However, the once-quiet history of the area was dusted off by residents of L’Anse and Alberta, and efforts by the Social Sciences Department at MTU to preserve the area are in action.

In May of 2022, plans were announced to tear down the currently closed Ford Alberta sawmill. Residents of L’Anse and Alberta rallied together to save the doorway to the rich, innovative Ford history in the Keweenaw, forming the Baraga County Historical Society Inc. Subcommittee Saving the Ford Alberta Sawmill. 

“This [sawmill] is the historical gateway to the entire Keewenaw, sitting right here on U.S. 41,” said board member Wayne Abba. 

The first step for the subcommittee was to save the pump house, which would’ve been demolished this summer if members of the society hadn’t heard of MTU’s plans, according to Michael DesRochers, chairman of the subcommittee. 

Dave Stimac, the last Head Sawyer employed by the Ford Alberta sawmill, explaining the steps in processing logs. Photo by Sydney Wilmot.

Dave Stimac, who worked as the last sawyer in the mill said, “From Tech’s side of it too, it just sits and sits, and what are you going to do with the building? But at least it’s salvageable now… if you wait too much longer, it won’t be.” 

The subcommittee agrees that after the pump house, they are likely to redo the siding and paint on the outside of the sawmill and ensure safety measures are in place. 

“This was given to Tech in [1954] by Ford to be used for educational purposes,” said DesRochers. 

Abba continued, “When they say that it’s unique, it’s not only the buildings in the village, but it’s the original 1,700 acres that were donated, plus about 2,300 [acres] that have been added, so there’s about 4,000 acres here of forest, the entire village… it’s a national icon.” 

This huge area is rich in the history of the Keweenaw with Canyon Falls nearby, a popular local attraction.

Professors Steve Walton and Mark Rhodes in MTU’s Social Sciences Department are now working with history students to put the sawmill on the National Register of Historic Places. In their expert opinion, they say that Alberta “is a very, very rare survival of an intact example of a showplace industrial village, built by an industrial magnate as a reaction to twentieth-century industrialization and urbanization.” 

Rhodes and Walton are using Alberta as a space to learn about and study the “industry, community and heritage in our own backyard,” stating that, “The Industrial Heritage and Archaeology program in the Dept. of Social Sciences recognizes the village of Alberta as a nearly unique and little-altered surviving example of a model industrial village from the early twentieth century.”

The pump house in Alberta, which was nearly demolished. Photo by Sydney Wilmot.

Rhodes used Alberta as the central case study in his graduate course Industrial Communities. He and his students have also updated the draft nomination form for the 2017 National Register of Historic Places (NRHP), expanding it to include the whole 1,700 acres that was donated to Tech along with the village and sawmill. Walton is planning on “documenting the sawmill operations, machinery, and process flow with graduate and undergraduate students” in the 2023-2024 academic year. 

Walton recognizes that while most of the historical focus has been on copper and iron mining, logging has been a crucial part of the UP since the nineteenth century, and continues to be a major export today.

He said, “From the point of view of the history of technology the sawmill is exciting as it was never modernized to any great extent, other than the replacement of some electrical systems with hydraulic ones in, we believe, the 1970’s or 80’s.” 

He said he was very interested in documenting the techniques and technologies of the 1930’s and 1950’s. 

Quiet history is easily lost, but local residents have not yet forgotten how much this sawmill means to the history of both the Keweenaw and the United States.

Rhodes and Walton agree that heritage sites are being lost all the time and unique ones like Alberta are both an inherent asset to the memory of a place but also key elements in historical tourism for the UP. 

Abba explained, “I think there was a bit of a realization that it was more than just a sawmill… So what we’ve done is get Tech to realize that it’s a whole lot more than that. The historic significance is international because of who Henry Ford was.” 

The idea of a self-sustaining town that brought Alberta to life was never fully realized, but it did inform Ford’s ideas of other company communities, particularly in Brazil, where he farmed rubber for tires. 

The head saw, with a mannequin standing in as head sawyer, inside the Ford Alberta sawmill. Photo by Sydney Wilmot.

The sawmill was closed as a working mill in 1956, was converted to a museum in 1996, and closed to the public in 2017. The museum illustrates clearly how impressive the sawmill truly was for the time. A “dust-free” environment, heat, and a roof were all luxuries the sawmill offered. Every scrap of wood was utilized – scraps were distributed to the community for firewood, and the sawdust was burned to heat the building.

Stimac recalled that as far as he knows, the mill never burned down, or had any major accidents. This was incredibly rare during the time it operated, as many saw and paper mills burned down and were rebuilt in the years they operated. The dust flying through the air was easily ignited with a simple spark, but with the dustless system and cleaning routine put in place at the Ford Alberta sawmill, this didn’t happen. 

With the increased communication between the sawmill subcommittee and the Social Sciences Department at Michigan Tech, there is a ray of hope to preserve the story of Henry Ford and the rich history of the Keweenaw.

Eventually, the committee hopes to open the sawmill as a museum to the public.