By Sterling McGinn
Wild blueberry picking is an annual August event for many Yoopers, who enjoy escaping to the north woods in search of berries in the hot summer sun.
Blueberries are also celebrated here with events like the Wild Blueberry Festival in Paradise, held last weekend.
However, a century ago, harvesting blueberries was a competitive and commercial industry in Luce County.
Early Newberry News items occasionally referred to the collection of berries by locals, though their harvest was more for local consumption or for sale at Newberry grocery stores.
By the early 20th century, blueberry collecting began to take on a more commercial interest as railways and roads continued to improve. At this time, the demand for the product was greatly increased.
In 1929, Newberry businessmen Joseph P. Rahilly and Andrew Westin, along with D.S.S. & A. Railroad freight agent William Nicholls, formed the Michigan Blueberry Company. They purchased berries from local pickers and shipped them in crates to out of town markets.
Though blueberries were found in many places in Luce County, by the 1920s and 1930s, the bulk of blueberry picking for commercial sale was harvested in a 12-sqaure-mile area known as the Two Hearted River Plains near Lake Superior.
In late July, scores of locals and out of town pickers headed north with cars loaded with tents and supplies. They established a tent village where they lived for the next six to eight weeks.
More than 50 tents, a few trailers, and several tar-paper shacks were set up in the picker’s village. Buyers’ tents were staged in the center. The berry pickers brought their daily collections to the buyers’ tents where they were purchased. The three primary buyers were the Michigan Blueberry Company and agencies in Chicago and Detroit. The buyers’ tents also contained everyday supplies the pickers could buy. The tent village had a well for drinking water and a stream for bathing and washing.
Fathers, mothers, and children picked berries. Newberry schools sometimes noticed a decline of children at the end of the first week of school due to children still on the plains picking berries with the family.
At times, more than 1,000 people were picking the blueberry plains, leading to yields totaling nearly a quarter of a million dollars.
According to a study conducted by George F Deasy in the 1930s, “The modern blueberry industry of Luce County is an important element in the economic life of the area. In good years, some 300 out-of-town pickers and an unknown number of local residents are in the fields for a period of several months, garnering between 100,000 and 250,000 crates of berries.”
Trucks hauled the berry crates from the Two Hearted River Plains.
“The typical truck employed to haul the berries handles 200 crates per trip, so that an average of 10 to 25 trucks per day call at the camp for a load. In the rush period of August, the number increases to between 25 and 50 trucks daily,” Deasy wrote.
Some of the trucks brought the crates to Newberry, where they were shipped out through Railway Express, while other trucks, owned by the canneries, drove straight to Chicago or Detroit.
Harvests varied each year due to market prices and weather conditions. The Newberry News of August 7, 1925, reported that a scarcity of blueberries in other areas of the Upper Peninsula led to Luce County pickers being paid high prices for their berries. “Buyers visit the camp each day, purchasing from the pickers, and in turn selling to the commission houses. They pay about 50 cents a bushel less than they are paid at the commission houses, who furnish crates and boxes and look after the shipments.”
In the 1930s, Ernest Troop, of St. Johns, Michigan, began hauling truckloads of blueberries to his lower Michigan home. In 1945, he opened Northern Canneries at Spring Hill on County Road 407, where 100 cases of berries were canned per day during the blueberry season. Troop also hauled loads of peaches and cherries from lower Michigan; these were also canned in Newberry. This operation lasted until the mid 1950s.
Commercial sale of blueberries in Luce County significantly decreased by the late 1940s as blueberry cultivation methods improved. Blueberry growing in regions closer to larger markets and areas with an earlier growing season growing led to the demise of large-scale blueberry sales here.
