x

75% of people globally want unbiased news (Pew Research) but are concerned they're not getting that.

Get balanced coverage with Symby. See how stories are covered across diverse outlets and spot when one side covers a story the other skips.

PODCAST

North Country History with Rob Burg

Your podcast on the Forest History of the Great Lakes Region. The forests of the Great Lakes have been home to people for centuries and have provided great resources and wealth, shelter, food, and recreation for many. But in the wake of these uses, the region has been environmentally damaged from deforestation, fire, and erosion, and are still recovering to this day. I will be your guide for exploring the forests and sharing stories of the forests and the people who have called them home.About Rob

history nature

All Episodes

27:17

David Ward's Timber Cruising Adventure

North Country History with Rob Burg ·

2025/04/07

In the early Spring of 1854, 31 year-old David Ward, not yet known as "the Pine King" sought one of the state's greatest stands of "cork pine" (the highest grade of the Eastern White Pine) west of Otsego and Bradford lakes in Otsego County. This would be a race with the St. Mary's Falls Ship Canal Company's timber cruiser, Addison Brewer for the same stand of pine. With the backing of Detroit lumbermen and bankers Dwight, Smith, and Co. and William A. Howard, David Ward and his assistan...

en-us

49:12

Deward: The Last of Michigan's Lumber Boomtowns

North Country History with Rob Burg ·

2025/03/10

In this final episode of the first season of the podcast, I am recording this remotely from the old lumber ghost town of Deward, Michigan. Deward lived as an actual town for just twelve years, 1900-1912, while the David Ward Estate logged off the last great pine lumber holdings of David Ward, Michigan's "Pine King" at the tail end of the white pine lumber boom. Deward was located on the banks of the Manistee River near where Antrim, Crawford, Kalkaska, and Otsego counties meet. This was...

en-us

62:55

The Wildlife of the Forests

North Country History with Rob Burg ·

2025/03/03

In this week's episode we travel to Hartwick Pines State Park where I visit with my old friend and former coworker Craig Kasmer, the park's interpreter/naturalist to learn about the wildlife that live in the northern forests. The Old Growth Forest at Hartwick Pines State Park is a unique area. The large white pines that survived the lumber era is the main attraction, but they are not the only special part of this forest. The decaying logs and snags (dead standing trees) provide habitat ...

en-us

72:22

Sigurd Olson and the Meaning of Wilderness

North Country History with Rob Burg ·

2025/02/24

In this week's episode, we depart a little bit from what we've been talking about and get a little philosophical regarding forests and the wilderness. I want to introduce listeners today to Sigurd F. Olson (1899-1982), one of my personal heroes. Sigurd Olson was an educator, canoe guide, outfitter, writer, and a leading voice in the preservation of wilderness. Sigurd Olson, the son of Swedish immigrants, his father being a Swedish Baptist minister, was born in Chicago and grew up...

en-us

73:36

Karen Hartwick and Hartwick Pines State Park

North Country History with Rob Burg ·

2025/02/17

Hartwick Pines State Park, located near Grayling, Michigan is a special place that preserves one of the few remaining Old Growth White Pine Forests in Michigan. On today's episode, special guest Hillary Pine joins the podcast to talk about the park and how it was created through the efforts of Karen Hartwick. Hillary is the Northern Lower Peninsula Historian for the Michigan Department of Natural Resources and the Michigan History Center. In the late 19th century the area that is now Hartwi...

en-us

34:41

The Kingston Plains

North Country History with Rob Burg ·

2025/02/10

In this episode, we head north to Michigan's Upper Peninsula and discover "the Kingston Plains." This is an area of cutover and burned over land, known as stumpfields because the most predominant feature on the landscape is the vast amount of fire-scarred tree stumps. Typically during logging operations there would be a lot of "slash" left after the big (and sometimes not so big) trees were harvested. This would consist of the branches and limbs from the trees that had been removed from the...

en-us

64:01

The Birth of Reforestation

North Country History with Rob Burg ·

2025/02/03

Near the end of the logging era, there was a realization that our forests were not the inexhaustible resource that was once thought. Throughout the United States there was an effort to reforest the cutover lands and develop a new system of modern forestry. In Michigan this began to happen in the Grayling-Higgins Lake-Roscommon area of the northern Lower Peninsula. In this episode of the North Country History with Rob Burg podcast I go on location to the Historic Higgins Lake Nursery and the ...

en-us

60:46

River Drives and River Hogs

North Country History with Rob Burg ·

2025/01/27

This episode is a continuation of the previous episode "Winter Logging." After the logs were cut in the winter they were moved to the banking grounds to await the Spring breakup of ice on the rivers to move the logs by water to the sawmills at the mouths of the rivers on the Great Lakes. River drives were the most dangerous aspect of the logging industry. It took a steady and skillful man to be able to handle logs on a river drive as they were shepherded to the sawmills. Injury and death coul...

en-us

58:20

Winter Logging

North Country History with Rob Burg ·

2025/01/20

Prior to mechanized transportation, logging and winter were synonymous. The only way to move logs upwards of 5-6 miles was on ice and snow. In the white pine region, this made winter the ideal season to be logging in the forests. Large log sleds were pulled by a team of two horses, or oxen in some locations, over roads that had been iced and carefully groomed over time to support the heavy loads. They were taken most commonly to a banking grounds along a river to wait for the Spring thaw and ...

en-us

65:17

Michigan's Lumber Boom

North Country History with Rob Burg ·

2025/01/13

"The lumber industry was to Michigan in the 19th century as what the automotive industry was to Michigan in the 20th century."* It was what most people outside of Michigan thought of when they thought of Michigan. And it was the period between the Civil War and the beginning of the 20th century that made Michigan the leader in lumber production.At the end of the U.S. Civil War the Michigan lumber industry resumed at a great pace. This was due in part with the construction of the Transcontinen...

en-us

39:46

Michigan's Early Lumber Industry

North Country History with Rob Burg ·

2025/01/06

Lumber has been an important part of Michigan since the earliest European settlements in the 1600s. With the founding of Detroit in 1701 by French explorer Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac, there would be a continuous need for the harvesting of white pine and other trees near settled areas. Jumping ahead a century to the creation of the Michigan Territory and the fire that destroyed Detroit the same year, lumber became an even more necessary industry. Surveys of Michigan Territory and after 1837,...

en-us

21:44

The White Pine: Michigan's Green Gold

North Country History with Rob Burg ·

2024/12/30

In this episode, listeners are introduced to the Eastern White Pine (Pinus Strobus). This tree, once rising upwards of 200 feet or more towered over the forests of eastern North America with trunks of six feet diameter. The European settlers to these shores found this tree to have an excellent quality of lumber that was both lightweight to work with and was buoyant to be moved by water from forest to sawmill. Not only was the white pine a valuable economic product for the residents of th...

en-us

18:00

Introducing North Country History

North Country History with Rob Burg ·

2024/12/25

In this premier episode of North Country History with Rob Burg, you will meet me, environmental historian Rob Burg, learn of my love of the forests of the Great Lakes region, and why I think there are important stories to be told about these forests. The forests were home to numerous nations of indigenous North American people for centuries. It was the forests that held the wealth of furs that brought European trappers and traders to the Great Lakes in the 17th, 18th, and early 19th centuries...

en-us

33 results

Similar Podcasts

The Old Front Line

Paul Reed

Today In History with The Retrospectors

The Retrospectors

جنود خلدهم التاريخ

ALSUMOOD PODCAST

Film History - Daily

Inception Point Ai

Madonna - Audio Biography

Inception Point Ai