[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 98 (Tuesday, July 21, 1998)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1363-E1364]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




              THE 75TH ANNIVERSARY OF KINGSFORD, MICHIGAN

                                 ______
                                 

                            HON. BART STUPAK

                              of michigan

                    in the house of representatives

                         Tuesday, July 21, 1998

  Mr. STUPAK. Mr. Speaker, there is an energetic community in my 
northern Michigan district that in its own unique way played a role in 
fulfilling the dream of Henry Ford to produce automobiles that would 
suit the budgets and lifestyles of ordinary Americans.
  Kingsford celebrates its 75th Anniversary on July 31, 1998, its 
diamond jubilee. Mr. Speaker, this is an excellent opportunity for all 
Americans to join with the people of Kingsford, who even call their 
high school football team the ``flivvers,'' to honor and celebrate 
those early, heady days of the development of wheeled transportation, 
including the Flivver automobile.
  As late as 1920 the population of the area that would become 
Kingsford was about 40 people, mostly miners working in the nearby 
Menominee Iron Range. Some mines were still active--would be so until 
the early 1980s--but the days of the great iron ore boom were clearly 
in the past, just as the days of the great logging boom were by this 
time only a memory.
  The presence of resources of both ore and wood, however, was 
attractive to one of America's premier industrial pioneers. Henry Ford 
had been interested in Michigan's Upper Peninsula as the location of a 
manufacturing facility for a number of years, and by 1919 the automaker 
was ready to build a plant.
  It was no coincidence that Ford looked at this area along the 
Menominee River in the south-central U.P. One of the people he enlisted 
to find a site for his plant was Edward G. Kingsford, the husband of 
Ford's cousin Minnie Flaherty and both a real estate agent and Ford 
dealer. Ford's holdings in the region would grow eventually to 400,000 
acres of iron and timberlands in seven northern Michigan counties in my 
district. Of this total, 350,000 acres were hardwood.
  As one might surmise from the size and importance of this project, 
there was much politicking and competition among communities for the 
plant. Once all the land purchase agreements were completed, the plant 
was established, employing as many as 8,000 people by 1925 in the 
production of wooden parts for the famous Ford Model T in Kingsford, 
Michigan.
  Progress in the design of the American automobile adversely affected 
this plant. Almost as famous as the Model T, the model A went into 
production using fewer wooden parts, and employment at the Kingsford 
Ford plant declined. In the early 1940s the production of woodsided 
station wagons provided work for the northern Michigan site, and by 
1942 the KIngsford Ford plant had made the switch to war production, 
producing gliders that would become so important to Allied victory.

[[Page E1364]]

  After the war the importance of the Kingsford plant had diminished 
further, and the facility was closed in 1951. Ford was gone, but an 
interesting legacy continued. The famous Kingsford-brand charcoal 
briquets, a by-product of wooden automobile part production, continued 
to be made in this U.P. community.
  As a small city, Mr. Speaker, the population of Kingsford is now 
about 5,500. Although the community is no longer a part of the Ford 
family of assembly plants, the transportation revolution wrought by 
these affordable Ford automobiles on the lives of ordinary Americans 
meant that tourism would become a new national industry, one that would 
benefit the Kingsford area. People now can travel from anywhere in the 
country to visit this area of gently rolling hills with thousands of 
lakes and hundreds of miles of rivers and streams. Hunting and fishing 
and the simple enjoyment of the vibrant colors of autumn means that 
tourism now vies with paper-making as the basic elements of the area's 
economic well-being.
  I am proud of the people of Kingsford and their struggles to survive 
and even thrive through periods of economic change, and I invite all my 
colleagues in the U.S. House to join me in paying tribute to this 
resilient and energetic community.

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