Did You Know?

Interesting Stories from the History of
Presque Isle County

The "Riverman"

During the lumber boom in Presque Isle County in the late 1800s, logs were floated down the rivers to Lake Huron.  The Ocqueoc River and its tributaries allowed logs from the Lake Nettie and Lake Emma areas, in the southwestern part of the county, to be floated all the way to Lake Huron, a distance of 25-30 miles.  Dams were scattered along the river to control water levels in the lakes and stretches of river to better float the logs.  Despite that, the logs often piled up into “log jams,” so lumber companies employed “rivermen,” or “river rats,” to keep the logs moving.

  One of the last of the rivermen was Peter Jarvis of Ocqueoc.  In 1888, 17-year-old Jarvis was hired to work as a riverman.  He reported to the Hemlock Dam in the evening, but was told he had to go to Spile Dam, four miles farther up the river. 

  With darkness fast approaching, Jarvis left immediately, following a blazed trail on the east side of the river.  Long before he reached Spile Dam, however, it got too dark to follow the trails.  Soon he was wandering aimlessly in a swamp, probably just north of Lower Barnhart Lake.

Late in the night, the area where he was wandering started to turn into a lake.  Jarvis didn’t know that every morning at two o’clock Spile Dam was opened.  This allowed a sizable portion of Lake Nettie to spill through the Barnhart Lakes and into the river to start the log drive on its way to Lake Huron.

In the dark, Jarvis climbed a small tamarack tree, but since its branches offered no handhold or foothold, he couldn’t stay up in it very long.  When he slid down, Jarvis was into water up to his waist.  After a while, he found a floating tree, which he climbed and sat shivering the rest of the night.  Being early April and cold at night, his clothes froze on him.

About daylight, the water had receded to normal levels, and Jarvis was able to continue his journey up the river.  He lived, not only to tell this tale, but until the ripe old age of 82 — the last of the rivermen.

(This story is taken from the Millersburg Centennial, 1901-2001  book, edited by Jody Banks Doran.)

*The Did You Know? series is part of the museum’s Local History Education Project that was implemented in 2007.  Through a grant from the Huron Shores Humanities Council, each school in the country received a boxed set of 25 short stories, each with an accompanying photo.  The stories are primarily geared to elementary and middle school students.  We hope to continue the series this year by  providing the schools with another 25 stories