NEWBERRY

Region: Tahquamenon & Seney, Grand Marais & Whitefish Point

This old lumber town of about 2,600 is the only town of any size for 60 mines. Newberry was processing lumber from surrounding camps as early as the Civil War. Unlike lumber boom towns like Flint, Saginaw, Muskegon, or Menominee/Marinette, Newberry didn't have the capital to develop into a manufacturing center. State institutions, aggressively sought by local civic leaders, have kept the town afloat – first a mental hospital, then a prison. The local forest products industry has been able to survive into the present day because of the variety of tree species in the Tahquamenon basin.

Newberry is a village of simple pleasures: woods, fishing, walks and bike rides, meeting friends at church or out at places like The Scoop on the south side on M-123.

Newberry village was founded by men who had built a railroad in the 1870s from St. Ignace to the Marquette Iron Range, connecting the Lower Peninsula railroad being built north up to the Straits of Mackinac. Here they built the Vulcan Furnace Company to make charcoal iron. Vice-president John S. Newberry named the main streets after family members (Newberry, Truman, Helen, Parmalee, John, etc.), none of whom ever lived here. Rising Republican politicians Truman Newberry and James McMillan, soon to become U.S. senators, were honored with especially prominent streets. The charcoal iron plant lasted until 1945.

Newberry's low point occurred when the big state psychiatric hospital south of downtown, which at its peak housed some 1,800 patients, was shut down in 1990. The stately, impressive Georgian-style campus of cottages and a hospital covered 900 park-like acres on M-123 on the south side of town. After the state closed the sprawling facility, jokes one local, "you could stand on our main street, throw a rock, and not have a chance of hitting a soul."

The Newberry Correctional Facility, formerly the U.P.’s state psychiatric hospital, is far and away the area’s most important employer. When Michigan’s Republican legislature put it on the budget-cutting block and opted to save a less efficient facility in West Michigan, the local Ford dealer organized a vocal, wide-ranging “Save Newberry” campaign. Its power surprised downstate political people who don’t expect many problems from the U.P. With only 300,000 people, the U.P. has only 4 state representatives and 1 ˝ state senators.

The community's economic blow after the hospital closed was greatly softened when, in 1995, the west part of the hospital site was used to build the Newberry Correctional Facility, a medium-security state prison. The facility houses 930 prisoners and has a staff of over 300, adding $28 million a year to the local economy. (It costs $30,000 to incarcerate one prisoner for a year.) Rolls of glinting silver razor wire top the prison's 16-foot perimeter fences, creating a less than heartwarming visual entrance into town.

Another economic boost is the impressive Louisiana Pacific plant just southeast of town. Using state-of-the-art pollution controls, the plant's 125 employees use Canadian spruce to make 100 million board feet a day of exterior siding. Yet another boon has been the surge in snowmobiling, turning the winter doldrums here into a beehive of activity, with many motels filled to capacity on weekends. Newberry has become the principal lodging center serving Tahquamenon Falls, which draws up to 750,000 visitors a year.

In a county without a stoplight (Luce County has only 7.7 people per square mile), Newberry is the only place between Sault Ste. Marie on the east and Manistique or Munising on the west where you'll find a fast-food chain like Pizza Hut. The far-flung Tahquamenon Area Schools may spend a larger percentage of its annual budget for transportation than any other school district east of the Mississippi.

Downtown specialty stores aimed at visitors and cottage owners come and go. But the Tahqua-Land Theater at 210 S. Newberry/M-123 has been something of a hidden gem, reopened in 2001. First-run movies are shown nightly at 7 and 9 p.m. Call (906) 293-3372 for what's playing. Once inside, you'll be amazed at the very large and colorful murals, original to the 1920s theater, depicting scenes from Greek myths: Cupid and Psyche, Daphnis and Chloe, and more. Owner Fred Dunkeld single-handedly funded the restoration, down to the gold leaf. To see them online, visit www.newberrychamber.net Another exciting development is the sale of the 1915 Falls Hotel, a three-story brick downtown landmark. Its new owners plan to renovate the building and start a restaurant.

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