Wandering unsupervised in various real and imaginary places. Detritus reflects my interests in robotics, travel, history and the odder aspects of the world around me.
A while back I had a look at an unusual and neglected monument. It marked one end of a long portage that was part of the connection between Lake Superior and the Mississippi River system. I put a geocache there, and it got a fair number of visitors. Likely more than this obscure marker had seen in a while.
Well, a few weeks back a geocacher said the entire monument had been demolished. Nothing left but a pile of stones. As this would be an unusual degree of industry for most vandals I expressed the hope that the plaque had just been relocated.
As indeed came to pass. It's now a couple hundred yards to the East, right on County Road M outside the American Legion Post. Hence the flags. The ghostly image of Hank the Dog is just happenstance.
Deer hunting approaches. And while the main focus this year will be on our land a ways to the south, the area around our cabin is still public hunting, and I have a tag for it. So I wander here and there looking for signs of deer, interesting trees, and...what the heck?
It's a well.
And some kind of cellar hole?
And a long stone wall with a flat area on one side.
Something is going on here. Now it helps to know the local history. This area was lightly inhabited by Ojibway folks for centuries, but they never built anything like this. Lumbering came in circa 1870's, but initially it was confined to stands of prime timber near rivers. This area did not get much attention until around 1890, when railroads were not too far distant.
Once the timber companies clear cut the land it was nearly worthless. Just stumps with plenty of erosion happening. Nearly worthless is not the same as totally worthless, so the land was sold off cheaply to anyone who wanted to try farming it. *
Very few succeeded. I've run across other remnants in my travels, but nothing quite this elaborate. So, anything else knowable???
Here is Google Earth of the area. The blue circle is roughly the location of the structures. The X is what I suspect is the oldest habitation on the lake, at least my take on the circa 1905 whiskey and soda bottles that turn up there when the water levels are low is any guide. "Supposedly" there was a log structure there from way back, that later became a lodge for a small mom and pop resort. Few traces remain.
Period maps of this area are scarce, so the best I can do is this roughly 1906 image.
The odd thing here is that the east west road in the upper image - "Pioneer Road" - no less, does not appear to be present. Look at where the road right at the number 34 lines up on the west side of the lake. I assume there was some sort of track that went to the H.H. Fleming place. I also assume that H.H. liked his whiskey. Pioneer Road must have been created later.
So it looks as if my dog and I were wandering about - on public land it should be noted - where Peter Larson once tried to farm the miserable cut over land. The long stone wall I'm seeing might well be a frontage onto the east west road that was then just south of his presumed dwelling. It's too big for any barn he'd be likely to need.
So what happened? That's going to be hard to know. Larson is a common name. And the story of little hardscrabble farms failing in the Great Depression is even more common.
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* An old timer told me once that "back in the day" you just had to go to the county extension office and you could sign for as much World War One surplus free dynamite as you wanted! And you'd want a lot to clear the stumps out that kind of land.
There are times when the world seems particularly illogical. Among the many reasons people give for this, our system of measuring things gets the occasional mention. Why, if only we used logical metric stuff everywhere!
In large measure the system you use on a daily basis is what you are used to. When in England I get acclimated, so to speak, and know that a 30 degree day there is sweltering hot, while the same 30 degree day back home (in my usual excavation time of April/May) is dreary and has a nasty chill.
If used regularly any system works. Perhaps not for scientific endeavors but just fine for staples of conversation like the weather. Some of the old measures actually have a basis in our daily lives, or at least the daily lives of our predecessors.
One foot used to be the length of, well, one human foot. Logical, although people have always had feet of variable sizes.....
Consider the "Big Foot" Roman shoes unearthed at the Magna site recently...
In fairness this specimen is being held close to the camera, in the manner of proud fishermen everywhere, but its pretty darned big. There's a whole video on these guys.... An inch derives from a foot. In Roman times an "uncia" was one twelfth of a foot. Uncia gives us the word inch. Efforts in later times to standardize it as say, the width of a thumb, encountered obvious difficulties.
If you are having a hard time fathoming these off hand measuring units, well, a fathom is simply the distance of the outstretched arms of a good sized mariner. That's about six feet.
Early folks were big on measurements that related to their daily lives. Most of them were farmers. So an acre - although initially just a term for forest land - evolved into the amount of land a team of oxen could plow in one day. Distantly the word might have a joint origin with agri as in agriculture.
And of course we have miles. As I have documented previously, one Roman mile was one thousand strides of a soldier, or mille pacem. As measurements go its pretty useful. As are yards, the rough distance of one such stride. I'm still using the latter getting ready for deer hunting season where distances to sight in rifles and crossbows are not given in meters.
The meter of course is a French construct. But lets not let them off the hook entirely. If you go back to define an acre it once was considered one furlong (660 feet) by four rods (66 feet). Rods are an almost entirely extinct form of measurement but weirdly portages in the Boundary Waters Canoe area are still given in rods. Why? Well its a bit obscure, but I blame the French. That part of the world was explored and mapped by Voyageurs, who were using canoes about one rod (16.5 feet) long. So a canoe length as a standard of measurement made as much sense as anything else. Considering that most of these guys were traveling light and not bringing along the marking chains to survey a furlong!
