Station: Deward, MI

Deward, in northwest Crawford County, was settled in 1901 around a saw mill, owned by the David Ward estate near the Manistee River. Ward was a lumberman and industrialist from Detroit. The mill operated until 1912. The town was a station stop on the Detroit & Charlevoix railroad, which later became a MC branch line. The town was abandoned about 1932. [MPN]

Image info: Top, a D&C train stopped at the Deward Depot in the early 1900's. [UML]. 2nd photo, another view of the Deward store and depot on the D&C. [UML]

Notes

The lumber operation used the D&C to transfer forest products to East Jordan and onto ships to Chicago and Milwaukee, or on rail cars that were interchanged with the MC at Frederic.

Time Line

1901. August 14. Deward will be the new headquarters of the D&C. It is stated sawmills will be built at Deward and the road, which has heretofore been a lumber road, be operated for general traffic. [DFP-1901-0815]

1905. September 8. Fred Bissette, a D&C brakeman was seriously injured by falling between cars near Deward. One leg was crushed above the knee, besides internal injuries which may prove fatal. He was taken to St. Mary's hospital, Saginaw, on the midnight train from Frederick. [PHDH-1905-0908]

1909. March. The estate of the late David Ward carry on extensive lumber operations. It owns some 77,000 acres of timber land containing about 800,000,000 feet of mixed timber. The mill at Deward has been operated for several years. During the year ending June, 1908, this mill manufactured 23,000,000 feet of pine and 1,000,000 feet of hemlock lumber. It also manufactures 3,800,000 pieces of lath and 2,030,000 shingles. [CCH-1909-0313]

1917. Deward was one Michigan Ghost Town That Fulfilled It's Destiny. It led the world in pine production. A quirk in the Will of the Founder doomed the city. Located northwest of Frederic and west of US-27, it became the greatest pine lumber center in the world for 10 years, then ironically it died by the quirk in the will of the man who created it.

Perhaps from the bordering hills, the spirit of David Ward drifts down with the evening mists to walk along the atreet of D. Ward's (Deward's) town. As a surveyor, David Ward, according to local legend, found the fabulous valley of huge pine trees, more than 90,000 acres of them (140+ square miles), and secured backing to buy the land. According to some accounts, he got it at a ridiculously low price.

Envisioning a timber operation that would perpetuate itself through a system of sustained yield cutting, he planned to set up the world's most modern sawmill, a village, round house, and commissary freight in the middle of his holdings.

All Michigan logging operations were conducted by hauling logs from the forest to some main railroad or port town. Ward's idea was to eliminate the extra expense in hauling the one-third waste that was standard for the industry. The project for creating Deward was underway in 1900 when he died. It was Deward's will that condemned the town to an untimely death.  By its terms, his trustees were to manage, invest and reinvest his estate for 12 years, at which time it was to be liquidated.

This, instead of operating the huge pinery on a sustained yield basis, the modern sawmill that started operations in 1901, went on a 20-hour daily schedule to liquidate Deward's estate. The executors of the estate governed the village in accordance with all of the plans David Ward has made. Liquor was forbidden in the town with the result that train crews made an extra buck or two rum-running for the thirsty lumberjacks.

Weekends saw a heavy exodus of the thirsty by train to Frederic, Grayling, Gaylord, and across the state to East Jordan, where one of Deward's railroads carried finished lumber for transshipment to eastern markets.

Two Frederic residents are seeking the location of the Monarch, said to have been the largest pine tree ever cut in Michigan. It was felled one Sunday afternoon as a special village event. It was reputed to have measured more than seven feet on the stump, and to have scaled out at more than 7,500 feet of lumber. "We're really going to have something for tourists to talk about if we can find that big tree." said Charles Chapman, a Frederic Scout leader. [BCT-1957-0616]

1957. Otis Weaver, now 79, had worked for a logging outfit that in 1917 logged off the last of what was the David Ward timber holdings. Weaver had no difficulty in leading the "Monarch Expedition" to the stump of what was once claimed to bve the second largest pine tree in the Deward pinery. Located in Section 11 of Frederic township, it had a stump more than nine feet in diameter.

As a young lumberjack, he assisted in loading the huge log. Weaver is still confident that the exact location of the Monarch can be found, and possibly that it will still be in excellent condition. "I was on a government survey party in 1932 and we ran some lines through this country. At the time, one of the older fellows in the party said he remembered we were in the approximate location of the giant stump." [BCT-1957-0714]