KINROSS

Region: Les Cheneaux Islands, Drummond Island & the St. Mary's River

Kinross was founded in 1891 as a station on the Minneapolis, St. Paul & Sault Ste. Marie Railroad (the Soo Line). It was named after a town in Scotland by the Scottish settlers who had moved south from Ontario. Nearby farms grew hay, grain, and vegetables to market in Sault Ste. Marie. Later I-75 was built a few miles to the east. Still a small town, by the 1930s Kinross straddled the old highway.
Starting in World War II, events came together to transform the rural area into a Cold War air force base with 7,000 military personnel and dependents, and then, when it closed, to build two state prisons with about 3,500 inmates.
The KINROSS AIR FIELD east of the town of Kinross was established in 1941 to protect the Soo Locks and provide a refueling base for World War II planes flying to Alaska. (See a full story in Wikipedia.) After the war, it became a civilian airfield. Then, starting in 1948 with the Cold War (the long political and military faceoff with the Soviet Union, not ended until 1989), the U.S. built up its defense capability. The Air Force took over the airfield and planned it to become a fighter-interceptor base guarding the Soo Locks. Soon the Air Force was at work constructing a modern runway and building housing. Soon Kinross had F-89D Starfire interceptors, followed by Delta-Dagger 56s, and eventually, in 1958 by B-52 Stratofortresses. The runway had to be extended to over 12,000 feet for them—only slightly shorter than that of K.I. Sawyer Air Force Base near Marquette.

The mission of Kinross's jet interceptors was to intercept any unknown aircraft picked up by ground-control radar stations in Northern Canada, Alaska, Greenland, and in Michigan at Calumet, Grand Marais, Sault Ste. Marie, Empire, and Alpena. (The highly visible round radar in Negaunee is for weather radar.) Kinross was also the operational center of the SAMs (surface-to-air missles) at nearby Raco. They were the first long-distance anti-aircraft missiles.
The Air Force plan was also to disperse Strategic Air Command bombers and tankers in case of attack.
In 1959 Kinross was renamed KINCHELOE AIR FORCE BASE in honor of the late test pilot Capt. Iven Kincheloe, a native of Cassopolis, Michigan. In 1956 he had achieved fame by reaching a peak altitude of 126,000 in a rocket-propelled research airplane. See "Kincheloe AFB 1960" on travel.webshots.com to see snapshots of life on the air base for airmen and brats (their children)— skiing, ice fishing, and sitting around drinking beer. "Thanks for a walk down (a cold one) down memory lane," wrote one airman. "I never saw so much snow!" A nostalgic brat told how kids loved building igloos and "sliding from our upstairs bedroom to the driveway."

By 1965 the Vietnam War was straining the defense budget. It was felt that Soviet bombers were not likely to attack the U.S. The Department of Defense announced that Kinross would be closed by 1971—part of the reduction of B-52 bombers. Political pressure gave it a short reprieve, but it closed for good in 1977. The former Kincheloe airfield was used in filming some runway scenes in the popular action movie Die Hard 2 with Bruce Willis. The Chippewa County International Airport occupies part of the airfield today.

Take M-80 east of I-75 at the Kinross exit to see the airport and former air force base (south of the road) and the community of Kincheloe (1950s-style base housing) north of I-75.

Communities in need of jobs may be happy to have a prison built outside their towns. Sometimes, as in the U.P., these locations are drives of up to six hours from the homes of prisoners' families—assuming they have cars. Prison systems in Michigan and elsewhere expanded greatly in the 1970s because of more rigid sentencing. In 1978 Kinross Correctional Facility was built on Water Tower Drive near the base housing, north of M-80. It has beds for about 1,800 inmates at Levels 1 and 2 (the lowest security levels)—down from 2,300 inmates a few years ago. Some education is provided, including GED preparation and training in custodial maintenance and building trades. (Inmates build Habitat homes.) Master gardener, music, and crafts programs are offered. The Chippewa Correctional Facility, opened in 1989, is south of M-80 near the airport. Consolidated with Straits Correctional Facility, today it houses 2,270 inmates—fewer than before. Most are in Level 2 in dormitory-style housing, but with some beds in segregation and detention cells. Educational programs are not offered. Its perimeter is surveyed by gun towers.

A new source of employment coming to Kinross is the big Frontier Renewable Resources cellulosic ethanol biorefinery scheduled to open in 2013. ("Cellulosic" means it uses lignocellulose from trees, other woody biomass, cornstalks, and such. Lignans are chemicals found in the cell wall of plants.) One partner is J. M. Longyear of Marquette, one of Michigan's very few remaining private forestland owners, known for its sustainable forestry and long-term and local investment horizons. The major partner is the Mascoma Corporation of Lebanon, New Hampshire, founded by two Dartmouth professors. It has developed a bioprocessing method to take pulpwood biomass from sustainably harvested hardwood forests and turn it into ethanol for fuel. That nonfood source wouldn't drive up food prices, as corn ethanol does. By using wood pulp's bark and lignen as fuel, the process uses less energy than other ethanol. It produces automotive fuel that burns with less greenhouse gas emissions fossil fuel, and 90% less than corn-based ethanol. Some say the process will use fewer subsidies, and that Kinross won this prize because of its location near an interstate, with a rail line to the site—closer to Lower Michigan refineries that would blend the ethanol into fuels. Supporters say the facility will employ an estimated 60 in operations at first, with 700 related jobs in timber harvesting and trucking—in addition to perhaps 150 construction workers.

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