GLADSTONE

Region: Escanaba, Menominee & the Green Bay Shore

8 p.m. at Van Cleve Park in Gladstone. Children can swim and play in the water later, thanks to the central and western U.P.’s late summer evenings and the warm, shallow waters here at Lake Michigan’s Little Bay de Noc.

This tidy, compact town of over 5,000 is on the west shore of Little Bay de Noc. Its attractive residential streets, Lake Shore Drive and Minneapolis Avenue, look out to the bay across beautiful Van Cleve Park, with its harbor and swimming beach.

Minneapolis backers of the Soo Line railroad founded the town as "Minnewasca Sioux" ("White Water") and established a flour mill here in 1887. But the town's main value came from its natural deep-water harbor. Local leaders soon changed its name to Gladstone - after the reform-minded British Prime Minister William Gladstone - because the Soo Line was financed largely by British capital. The railroad got its name because it connected Minneapolis-St. Paul with Sault Ste. Marie and Canada. Canadian business interests drummed up support for the railroad to help develop the Canadian economy. The Soo Line built engine repair shops here and developed the harbor to provide it with a Lake Michigan port for shipping grain from Minneapolis.

These unusual concrete figures of Indians are actual portraits of people known to the artist in northern Michigan, and said to resemble them closely. The sculptures were moved to the east end of Van Cleve Park by a descendant of the original owner.

In the late 19th century Cleveland Cliffs Iron (owner of productive iron mines in and around Ishpeming) built a blast furnace and chemical plant on Lake Michigan just beyond the northern edge of Gladstone, in an unincorporated place known as Kipling. Here kilns burned hardwood to produce charcoal as a purifier for the iron smelting process. They also extracted additional chemicals from the wood, such as resins used in glue. By 1910 descriptions mentioned company houses extending "as far as the eye could see." Today only three houses remain.

The name "Kipling" honors Rudyard Kipling, who passed through when he toured the North Country along the Soo Line - a trip arranged by its financial backers. The famous poet and novelist, author of The Jungle Book and Kim, asked the name of this industrial town. Actually it had no name. "Kipling" was the reply, just as "Rudyard" had been the response to a similar query in the eastern Upper Peninsula. Later Kipling wrote a poem entitled "My Two Sons in Michigan." The Kipling House Bed and Breakfast (see under Gladstone lodgings) now occupies the last of Kipling's six big boarding houses.

Gladstone's 1930s City Hall has the no-nonsense look of that era.

Gladstone thrived with the railroad, then slowed down. But the population is now back up to its 1930s level of over 5,000 with the addition of choice suburban real estate up on the bluff west of U.S. 2. Gladstone's harbor is now used for recreational boats.

Today Gladstone is headquarters for the fast-growing Besse Forest Products Company. Its founder, John Besse, has a knack for turning near-bankrupt mills into profitable ventures. Besse now has around 1,200 employees and 15 mills across 3 states. One of them, Northern Michigan Veneer, is at 710 Rains Street, on the shoreline north of central Gladstone. Employing 120, it can turn out 77 million square feet of veneer a year. Besse is now looking toward the vast China market.

Two unusual, nationally visible companies are in Gladstone. Marble Arms, founded in 1892, has been best known for its hunting knives. These expensive knives have become desirable (and expensive) collectors' items. Today the company, which employs 25, no longer makes knives and specializes in making iron gunsights.

Another uncommon firm, the Hoegh Pet Casket Company, ships high-impact styrene plastic products all over the country. See Gladstone points of interest for tour and pet cemetery info.

Getting to the town of Gladstone from U.S. 2/41 is not as easy as you might assume, because rail yards separate it from the highway. Look for the signs along the highway. The southernmost entrance is via Marble Avenue/Lake Shore along the lake. The main retail street, Delta Avenue, intersects with U.S. 2 opposite the freight yard.

Soon over 100 sights of unusual scenic and historic interest between Gladstone and Menominee will be marked with special signage as the Hidden Coast Recreational Heritage Trail. (It's not a bike trail.)

Return to Escanaba, Menominee & the Green Bay Shore

PLACES AROUND GLADSTONE TO

Eat Sleep Camp