These scenes from around Edmore Michigan, in Montcalm County, show what came after Michigan’s great lumber boom. Once this ground held a deep white pine forest; by the early 1900s, it was a sea of stumps. Crews of farmers and hired hands stand beside towering wooden pullers, their horse teams hitched to chains and blocks. In winter, they work in the snow, loading roots onto sleds.
In warmer weather, they strain through mud, hoisting whole root balls into piles to burn. Michigan led the nation in lumber production in the 1880s, but that left millions of acres of cutover ground like this, hard as iron with buried roots. Turning it into usable farms took years of effort, one stump at a time.
As you look at the men’s heavy coats, worn tools, and patient horses, you’re seeing the moment when central Michigan shifted from timber country to small farms, and families tried to build new lives on land that had already been worked over once. Some rigs use tall A-frame tripods with screw jacks; others rely on simple teams dragging roots to wagons lined up along the hill.
Nothing here runs on gasoline yet. Power comes from oats, muscle, and time.
