The temperature finally fell below zero for the first time in the season at Minnesota-frontier reporting stations on December 17, 1855. Prior to this cold snap, relatively mild weather helped Charles T. Harvey and his party survive a harrowing journey “in between seasons.”
Harvey, one of the men who oversaw the building of the first locks at Sault Ste. Marie in 1855, headed west that same year, eager to expedite overland travel by rail across the Upper Peninsula wilderness. In mid-November, Harvey visited Ontonagon, then the largest village on the Peninsula, working on land grants for eventual railroad construction. He intended to take the last steamer of the season east, but “it passed in the night of the 19th.” The landlord of the hotel Harvey was staying at “whether by accident or design” failed to wake him in time and he was left stranded in the town with no more boats expected until next spring.
He was in a quandary: “To the south intervened four hundred miles of wilderness. Eastward, an overland trip of sixty miles to the head of Keweenaw Bay and about one hundred forty miles of lake coasting would enable me to reach Marquette.” Harvey chose the latter route but had to wait, because the trip to Keweenaw Bay was riddled with impassable swamps. They could not be traversed on snowshoes until they froze over sufficiently.
Winter made a late start (not as late as the past couple of years) in 1855 and kept Harvey in Ontonagon more than two weeks. Finally, at the beginning of December, a mail carrier arrived in Ontonagon from the east and reported the swamps frozen. On December 3, Harvey headed east accompanied by the mail carrier, two voyageurs engaged to carry packs, and a business partner, E.C. Hungerford. The party loaded provisions, blankets (they decided against carrying a heavy canvas tent) and a “train dog” into a two-horse sleigh and headed east up the road to the Minnesota Mine then to the Toltec Mine where the road ended. At that point, the team was turned back and the men camped for the night.
The next morning, each man strapped on snowshoes, the dog was hitched to a sledge and the party set off into “the forest primeval.” The mail carrier led them through “various unfrozen streams and morasses,” which hindered their progress and made for a long trip. They spent two nights camping under the stars and on the afternoon of the third day “the blue waters of Keweenaw Bay came in sight.” That night was spent at the Methodist Indian Mission, and the following day plans for the next and longest leg of the journey were made.
“The air was mild, the water calm, and the sky serene,” recalled Harvey. The party was faced with two travel options: take the overland route to Marquette, which would require at least six days of “very hard traveling” or go by boat. The placid weather led them to choose the latter option and a small Mackinac was purchased and made ready for the one-hundred-mile journey.
The next morning, four men (the mail carrier went on to Marquette on foot the night before) and the dog were packed into the “row boat” along with the sledge and provisions for three days. The Mackinac, fully loaded, had only eight inches of “freeboard” above the water and the sharp, wedge-shaped ends made the craft unsteady, like a canoe. However, the weather was still mild and quiet and they made good time skirting along the glassy surface on the east end of the bay heading north. That night they camped at the tip of Point Abbaye, the strip of land separating Keweenaw Bay from Huron Bay. After a quick breakfast, they cast off on a dangerous, 12- to-15-mile stretch over open water.
The voyageurs rowed, with Hungerford stationed in the front as lookout and Harvey serving as steersman with a short oar or paddle. The dog sat in between the oarsmen. “Our progress was slow,” Harvey recalled, “not more than three miles an hour.” By midday they were still miles from land. There was no wind, “but a heavy ‘dead swell’ of increasing broad crestless billowy waves” broadsided the fragile craft from 150 miles of open lake to the northeast. The swells were an ominous sign of an impending gale. “The oarsmen were urged to the utmost,” Harvey later wrote, “and at intervals Hungerford and the writer took their places.” As they frantically labored to reach the safety of the main shoreline to the southeast, “the sky became overcast with a murky haziness.” Far off to the northeast Harvey spotted whitecaps from the approaching storm.
“There was yet a mile or more to the point we were aiming for, when the wind reached us,” recounted Harvey. “The size of the ‘white caps’ grew rapidly larger, and ‘ere long began to come over into our ‘cockle shell’ boat.” Fortunately, they kept the vessel afloat by bailing and finally reached a rocky point along the shore in what is now extreme northern Baraga County. Quickly the men hauled the boat a safe distance from the angry lake. Harvey remembered how close they came to disaster: “A few minutes delay would have sufficed for the waves to fill the boat, and thus ended our lives.”
As night approached, the gale increased until the spray from the waves went over the tops of nearby trees. Three times during the night they moved the boat farther away from the raging waves, which Harvey felt rivaled those found on the ocean. The following morning the cold, wet party beheld a sight that “was grand beyond description.” Their landing point extended into the lake and received the full force of the waves whipped by the nor’easter.
“The concussion of the waves on the shore sounded like a battle cannonade,” wrote Harvey, “and shook the ground like earthquakes.” Luckily, the wind was not extremely cold and it actually began to subside. Then heavy snow began falling. The snow “covered the ground about two feet deep,” recalled Harvey, “and… [also]… ourselves…as we lay the third night, ‘camped out’ in our blankets.”
The fourth day the snow and wind ceased, the sun shone and the lake calmed down. The party’s provisions were exhausted and they began eating the dog’s food, which consisted of fried cakes, made of half tallow and half cornmeal. They realized their situation was desperate, so they chose to cast off for Marquette as soon as possible while the weather held. That afternoon they launched their Mackinac and headed along the shore of what is now far northern Marquette County.
“The daylight soon passed,” remembered Harvey, “and a night of inky darkness came on, so dark at times that we could hardly distinguish each other in the boat. But the surf along the shore was loud and continuous, thus enabling us to follow its contour with certainty hour after hour.”
Suddenly, an apparition seemed to rise out of the depths of the cold, black water straight ahead of them. To Harvey, it seemed to resemble “a colossal human head with flowing white hair muttering dire threats.” He snapped out of his momentary confusion and sprang to action, shouting to the oarsmen to back stroke while he made similar quick motions with his steering paddle. They barely avoided a rock outcropping that extended a foot or two out of the water. The apparition he saw was the spray of the surf against a rocky reef.
Hungerford, who had passed along the same coast in daylight, concluded they had encountered the dangerous “Sauks-Head Reef.” The party had another difficult decision before them; the rock formation extended far out into the lake, but landing on the main shore was too risky, owing to the rocky cliffs and inky blackness of midnight. They felt the only alternative was to turn the boat around so the roar of the surf would be at their back. They had to “outflank” the reef by heading toward the open lake.
In his anxiety to avoid the reef, Harvey steered the vessel on the same course for about a half hour. Suddenly it occurred to him that he might have led them too far out into the “trackless waste of waters.” A cold shudder passed over him as he ordered the oarsmen to cease paddling. Harvey listened: “No sound could be heard, and for a moment…[my]…heart stood still”. Were they lost out in the open lake? He leaned over and brought his ear close to the water and in time noticed “a faint sound like the buzzing of a fly.” He turned the boat toward the sound and the voyageurs rowed at full speed. In a few minutes Harvey repeated the ear test. “To …[my]…inexpressible joy, the sound was more distinct” and they continued until the surf again became a distinct roar and steadfast guide.
The danger was not past, however. About one in the morning it turned very cold and an hour later ice began forming on the oars, steering paddle and the sides of the boat. The craft began to lower in the water and it became evident they would founder before daylight. The only hope lay in attempting a risky landing in the pitch dark. The shoreline was faced with huge, perpendicular cliffs rising straight out of the water sometimes to a height of one hundred feet. As the sound of the surf got closer, Harvey shouted “Brace up boys, for we will be on Earth or in Heaven in the next few minutes!” No sooner had he spoke when he felt his paddle hit a sandy bottom. A moment later, the boat slid up a sandy beach. They had landed safely.
They noticed the woods came very close to the water, and after disembarking they groped among the trees until they found a white birch with shaggy bark. They pulled off some of the bark and gathered a collection of moss off other trees. Snowshoes were then used to clear a spot to make a fire. Harvey, cold, wet and exhausted, rifled through the provisions looking for matches. He found the matchbox and realized there was only one match left!
There was a single chance to get a fire going to ameliorate the unrelenting cold. Hungerford was appointed “district fire lighter” because he had “a remarkably steady hand.” He took the last damp match, struck it and carefully cupped his hand around the tiny flame while he eased it over to the heap of moss. Success! The moss caught fire and spread to the birch bark and soon there was a roaring fire. The Frenchmen, who were all but paralyzed by the cold, had remained sitting in the boat. They were helped out of the Mackinac and led to the fire to thaw out. Harvey pulled out a small amount of food he had saved for an emergency and the tired, drained travelers consumed the small ration, rolled themselves up in their blankets in the snow by the dying fire and fell fast asleep.
The men woke up to bright sunshine. They quickly packed up and launched the boat, and as they drifted from their haven, Harvey surveyed their landing site: “On both sides of our mooring place were frowning cliffs—but a small stream…had worn a gulch and created the cove where we landed.” Had the craft floated a hundred feet left or right, it would have been dashed to pieces against the rocky precipice. Harvey looked south and recognized “the bold headland of Presque Isle” (now a Marquette city park) about ten miles away. The travelers, buoyed by the site, rowed at full speed toward the landmark. At about three in the afternoon on December 13, ten days after leaving Ontonagon, they disembarked at the small hamlet of Marquette.
Harvey later found out that the Methodist missionary at L’Anse had sent a letter to Marquette’s Postmaster explaining how a party of four led by Charles T. Harvey had left his mission in a boat just before a great storm set in. He stated how it seemed impossible that anyone could have survived the gale and suggested a search be mounted along the lakeshore for the travelers’ bodies.
Harvey rested in Marquette, but was determined to go south to Green Bay, then Chicago and finally Washington D.C. to plead Upper Michigan’s case for railroad land grants. He had to wait some more: this time for Green Bay to freeze enough to carry a horse-drawn sleigh. Fortunately for the determined Harvey, steady cold settled in after midmonth. At Minnesota reporting stations, the temperature finally went below zero for the first time on December 17. Then perfect ice making weather ensued. Below zero readings were reported all day on December 23 and 24 and also from the 26th through the 29th. Steady cold continued into January and by the end of the month, word came of good solid ice on Green Bay. A sleigh path opened between the iron mines west of Marquette and the Escanaba River lumber camps and Harvey hitched a ride south on a on a two-horse sleigh driven by Dr. Morgan Hewitt, one of Marquette’s founders. In three days, the team reached the mills near the mouth of the Escanaba River. Now, only 120 miles of ice lay between them and Green Bay.
The sleigh hardly penetrated the icy expanse of the bay when near disaster struck. Harvey was at the reins when the horses plunged through the ice. A fissure in the solid ice pack developed and became covered with a thin, camouflaging film of ice and snow. One moment the team was gliding along at a brisk pace, the next moment “all to be seen was their heads…held up by the pole end, resting on the opposite edge of ice.”
Fortunately, Harvey and Hewitt saw a sleigh approaching from the north. Amos Harlow, also one of Marquette’s founders, was at the reins. With his help, the horses were hauled out on the south side of the fissure. They sustained no serious injury and the sleigh continued its glide across the frozen bay. The trip to Green Bay was completed in three days.
Harvey eventually made his way to Washington as an official “Northwest” delegate to Congress. He represented the interests of the nascent Upper Michigan railroad companies in acquiring federal land grants for railroad construction. His arrival in Washington caused quite a stir. “When I reached Washington,” he recounted, “my snowshoes were strapped to my grips and attracted so much attention that I had to elbow my way through the crowd on the sidewalk to the entrance of the National Hotel.”
Harvey later got involved in a number of ventures, none very successful from a financial standpoint. He founded the Marquette suburb of Harvey and platted and named many of the streets in the town. He is credited as the inventor of the elevated railroad in New York (Image 2 above), but he did not benefit financially from that venture, either. The man lead a very interesting life, but he died penniless in a New York City tenement in 1912.