Station: Metz, MI

Metz was settled in Presque Isle County about 1879. [MPN] The Detroit & Mackinac railroad began serving the community after it purchased the Alpena & Northern railroad. The station in Metz reportedly burned during the forest fire of 1908 and it is not known whether the photos at the left are before or rebuilt after the fire. 

Photo Info: Top and 2nd photo, two view of the D&M Metz depot about 1908. [Marcia Simmons collection]

Notes

Time Line

1907. April 12. Five men were seriously injured and a number of passengers slightly injured tonight when D&M passenger train No. 3, southbound, collided with a switch engine near Metz. Both engines were totally wrecked by the impact.

It is alleged that the crew of the switch engine left Cheboygan without stopping for orders. The engineers of both trains, the express messenger and baggageman were all seriously injured. A wrecking train and a special carrying surgeons was dispatched from Alpena. [DFP-1907-0413] The engineer, John Murphy, died from his burns this morning. He leaves a widow and several children at his Cheboygan home. He was 50 years old. [DFP-1907-0414]

1908. Governor Warner was in Alpena this evening with the chief officer of the D&M railway to see the remnants of the Metz fire. They spent the day visiting the burned district around Metz and Posen. The first house completed at Metz of 20 the D&M is building, have 40 people sleeping in one shack. The D&M railway's own carpenters and lumber are building 20 houses at Metz for sufferers. Fifty houses and 75 barns are burned in Alpena County. There were 160 families burned out in the southern tier of townships in Presque Isle county. There are now only three houses between Metz and Rogers City, in what was a thickly settled country. 

The list of dead will reach fully 50, as dead bodies are being found daily on country roads and in burned logging camps. Six Alpena County school houses were burned, one each in the Spain, White, Orchard Hill, Bolton, Ossineke and King settlements. About 1,000 refugees are now in or near Metz. [DFP-1908-1020]

1910. The D&M railroad will not have to pay damages for the death of 10 persons who lost their lives in the burning of the relief train on which they were fleeing from the forest fires near Metz in the fall of 1909. This is the decision of the circuit court in the test case which has been on trial here this week. The administrator of the estate of one of the 10 victims brought suit against the railroad company for $5,000 damages, but the court decided for the company on the grounds that there was no negligence on its part. The case probably will be taken to the supreme court. [YEX-1910-0527]

1927. The D&M had a daytime operator at the Metz depot. [ETT-1927]