Saline's record-breaking mastodon trail

In 1992, Harry Brennan began digging in his pasture near Saline, about ten miles south of Ann Arbor. He wanted to create a pond, but when Brennan began fishing mastodon bones from the newly exposed soil, he knew he might have to put his plans on hold. Brennan contacted Dr. Daniel Fisher, a paleontologist at The University of Michigan, who visited the site with an excavation team. What Fisher and his crew discovered earned Brennan's land a place in the record books. Buried under two or three feet of soil was a 75-yard-long trail of mastodon footprints. These weren't fossilized footprints....they were actual footprints, made by a mastodon about 11,000 years ago. Scientists determined that the line of about thirty imprints was the longest preserved trail of continuous mastodon footprints in the world.



Scientists examining some of the footprints on Brennan's land

How can a set of footprints survive for 11,000 years? Fisher explained the process to the Chicago Tribune back in 1992. Basically, a male mastodon (scientists could tell it was a male because of the prints' size and depth) walked across what at the time was a pond whose bottom contained sand covered by a mud-type substance called marl. When the mastodon stepped down, his weight pressed his foot deep into the sand at the bottom of the pond. When the mastodon raised his foot, suction forced marl into the cavity, essentially preventing the footprint from disintegrating in the sand. As years passed, the pond filled with soil that covered the marl-filled footprints, which eventually ended up two or three feet below the surface, hidden to the world---until Brennan decided to create a pond on his property.

The footprints are remarkably well preserved, and reveal so much information about the mastodon's trek that researchers can tell where he stumbled on a log and then righted himself. Because the footprints were too fragile to dig up, Fisher made casts of them; then, he and his team reburied the trail to preserve it, though they marked the prints' locations so that researchers could find them for future study.


For more information:

If you're interested in seeing some of the casts, you can check them out at U of M's Museum of Natural History in Ann Arbor.


Many people confuse mastodons with mammoths; both animals looked similar, and both lived in Michigan. So what's the difference? Here's a pic showing models of the two side-by-side:



The mammoth is on the left, the mastodon is on the right.

Mammoths were larger than mastodons and had longer trunks; mammoths' tusks also curved more than did mastodons' tusks. Evidence from fossilized teeth reveals that mammoths ate primarily grass, while mastodons ate leaves and branches from trees. A fun fact: Although mastodons might have looked more like elephants than did mammoths, it's actually mammoths that are more closely related to today's elephant species.

The secrets of the Huron Mountain Club

The history of the Huron Mountain Club, in northern Marquette County, is a study in contrasts (and a difficult study at that, as its members are notoriously tight-lipped about their little piece of paradise). When it began around 1890, the club served as a high-priced, very exclusive hunting ground for industrialists from cities like Detroit and Chicago. Membership in the club, located on Lake Superior near the community of Big Bay, was limited to fifty primary members (people who could own cabins) and eighty associate members (people who couldn't live on-site). The club became a source of mystery and, eventually, consternation to locals, especially after a potential member thwarted plans to create a state highway that would have passed near the club's land (more on that later). To many, the Huron Mountain Club represented greed and self-interest over the needs of the community at large.

Old-timey postcard of the Huron Mountain Club

Fast forward several decades, and Michiganders are singing a different tune. The very exclusivity that made the Huron Mountain Club a focus of derision in the early 20th century has helped preserve approximately 24,000 acres of pristine lakes and forests. Because club members are fiercely protective of their land, they've worked to stop developers from altering the landscape. Consequently, they've created a wildlife preserve of sorts, albeit one accessible only to Huron Mountain Club members.

As mentioned previously, the Huron Mountain Club began as a playground for the monied class. In the 1880s, prominent Midwesterners like Cyrus McCormick (founder of the tractor company that became International Harvester) and Frederick Miller (of Miller Brewing Company fame) bought land in the Huron Mountains, establishing the area as a hot spot for wilderness recreation among the wealthy. The Huron Mountain Club was founded soon after, and attracted so much interest that when a certain automobile magnate named Henry Ford decided he wanted in, he found himself placed on a waiting list.

Ford was not one to sit around until an existing Huron Mountain Club member sold his land or died. To get in the club's good graces, he bought land nearby, then refused to let officials build state highway M-35 across the property, even though the trunkline's proposed route had been established before Ford bought his land. The Huron Mountain Club rewarded Ford's efforts by making him a member, and Ford promptly hired workers to build a $100,000 hideaway in his long-sought-after holdings.

Henry Ford, thinking about how great it is to be rich

 

Huron Mountain Club members thwarted other attempts to encourage public use of surrounding land, including an effort in the 1950s to create a national park in the Huron Mountains. Though some might see such efforts as exclusionist, it was actually the Huron Mountain Club's wise stewardship of its acreage that made the area such an attractive site for public recreation. In 1938, naturalist Aldo Leopold conducted a study of the Huron Mountain Club's holdings and created a management system that helped members preserve the old-growth hardwood forests in which they lived. Had the club not taken this and similar measures, its land might have fallen victim to overdevelopment, and the Huron Mountains would never have been considered an appropriate venue for a national park.

The Huron Mountains

Today, the Huron Mountain Club consists of 50 primary members and 100 associate members who are just as secretive as their predecessors. Many are descendants of the club's founders. Huron Mountain Club members avoid the media and generally keep to themselves. However, their conservation work continues, just as it did in the days of Leopold's nature study. The Huron Mountain Club has opened its holdings to the Huron Mountain Wildlife Foundation, which conducts biological and geological research. Conservation, not hunting, is now the focus, as today's Huron Mountain Club attempts to keep its land as pristine--and as private--as possible.