Ludington, Michigan Full Episode | John McGivern's Main Streets

[Music] I am in Michigan on the Eastern shores of Lake Michigan in a former Lumber Town that is now home to a very big ship we thank the underwriters of John McGill's main streets because without them we couldn't make this show your community's best selfie spot is your type from the green circle Trail to Point brewery you'll find more fun in Stevens Point Wisconsin visit okan moak Lakes festivals shopping dining the heart of Lake Country my father taught me that to make grape Bakery you have to do it the right way onh Danish Bakery where cringle Traditions begin yes Greendale is beautiful on the outside but it's what's inside that counts who doesn't love opening a door to their happy place whether it's indulging your sweet tooth winding down [Music] or exploring your creative side come on in you just got to see [Music] Greendale there's always something shining bright in Sun prair Wisconsin Heiser Automotive is honored to help John mcgiveron and his team arrive safely to many main streets we are committed to remaining true to the Heiser way do what's right for our customers our employees and the communities we serve we are happy to help horican Bank Westbend insurance company the friends of Main Streets and the friends of PBS [Music] Wisconsin speaks to me there's no else I'd rather be the heart and soul of communities right here on these main streets I am in Waterfront Park in lington Michigan in the 1850s settlers came to start Lumber Mills and the interesting thing once the lumber was all gone the lumber baren stuck around lettington has a population of 7700 people it's 3.6 square miles and it's in Michigan's lower Peninsula it is right on the lake right in the middle of the coast and it's about 100 miles Northwest of grand Rapids this is lington Michigan I mean why did the lumber baren stick around after all of the forests were gone you know that feeling we get after we've been to a community filming where we fall in love with the people we fall in love with the area that's exactly the feeling the lumber Barons had so they decided let's bring in some electricity and some telephones and some Transit and make a go of this and no one did more for this community than James lettington in his story he came to this area because because he was going to run a mill that he had acquired through a defaulted loan and he just kept adding more bridges more roads he just did so much for this community that they renamed it after him he built this city not on rock and roll nope on Woods and Water on Woods and Water so I I I get the woods because they were Lumber Barons but like where does the water fit in by 1950 this was the busiest car faery port in the entire world and when you say car faery you're talking about uh that big girl right there oh her yeah the SS Badger one of only two Lake Michigan car fairies still in operation today 600 people can go on her 180 vehicles and it's how we got over here we could either do this or we could drive um from Milwaukee around Chicago and then up to lington but come on and it's a beautiful day for sailing you can Sun babe look at these we got Chase lounges I got to go because I'm call bingo in a minute my name is Michael I'm be calling bingo today also today we have John mcg's Main [Applause] Street you guys know him yeah yeah and you and you still came okay you ready let's go here we go I 21 no ma'am you don't have Bingo what i22 I almost said 122 I told you earlier this is hard G5 before you know John's always going to special places he's not the only one today this room right here is the most important room on the ship thank you so much for letting us up here what do you love most about this job the view the view out of my office is absolutely spectacular as you see I love interacting with our passengers with the people everybody's having a good time and it's just a great experience to walk around and talk to people and see what they're from and what they're doing are there any more of these in the Great Lakes are there any more of these anywhere no this is the only one this is the only one that goes across the lake and that's steam powered and it's 71 years old it's really cool it's really cool and I bet you have guests from all over the world who want to experience this we do it's been millions of people and a lot of the people remember our communities manok and lington by the experience they had aboard the badger and uh it's just such a a big component of the lifestyle of the two kind of small communities um I don't think you can overstate that we think we have a really unique vessel here and we love to share it with others that's how we welcome everybody to lington with our Lighthouse so Emmy if I ever retire guess what I'm going to do what I'm calling Bingle in the badger for the rest of my life did you know that the SS Badger has a sistership the SS Spartan the Spartan was decommissioned in 19 1979 and now it's used mostly for parts for the SS Badger I have a question how did the badger and Spartan get their names hey I have the answer I knew you would stay right here here She is it might be the easiest trivia question we've asked you all season but the ship's got their name because they are two of the mascots from the States you know Michigan State Spartans and the Wisconsin Badgers but I'd just like to point out that it's the badger that is still running go with [Music] Onin it's always fun to come to a place that has a status of being iconic how did this all happen in 1948 my grandfather ran you know the small ice cream parlor then that had a dupe box in the corner and yeah and it was a really good good life and then I came around in 1960 and at that point my dad and my grandfather had gone to exclusively producing ice cream but now it's full service everything yeah we do breakfast lunch and dinner is ice cream still made here it is yep my dad used to say that my grandpa made 100,000 gallons of ice cream in a year and my dad said I made 100,000 gallons of ice cream in a day we make somewhere between about 28 million and 30 million gallons a year but the fourth generation is here my son-in-law is our GM my grandson Everett loves to work with me so right and and a really popular place in town you know there's lines so I guess that means that we're popular Andrew what do we got what are you going with first right now I am just making one of our super pigs dinners super pigs yep what's that that is our armor Cherry moose tra oh that looks good coconut Joy pistachio here do some Michigan Taco Beyond chocolate super mix there was a lemon something as well lemon cheesecake Blue Moon right Blue Moon is Blue Moon is a Midwestern United States flavor and flavor-wise what is it it's nobody knows whip it Andrew flavor-wise is a different every Seas so we run typically 42 flavors of ice cream in a summer season you know in the winter we're about 36 flavors we change it up which is a big deal to people for the most part I want to have them find what they're looking for if I take a flavor off they're mad don't be Krabby you'll have to leave right here's my lettington Tim Jamesport Brewing Company back in the late 1800s this building housed Johnson Brothers Saloon then for the next 100 years plus it was a variety of different businesses but it's back to its beer Roots 110 years later this is their Flagship beer the blueberry wheat okay I'll drink it fantastic if you're looking for a souvenir from lington that's not a keychain or a shot glass you really should consider a beautiful piece of art that you can hang on the wall come on here Todd and Brad Reed and Rachel godet are a family of photographers who tell Michigan stories through photos and text when I first saw her it kind of took my breath way she was over here yeah and then I saw this negative space so I waited till she got into there turned out to be one of the best photos I've ever taken this is the biggest cloud we've ever seen it looks mean my dad shot this out of a bedroom window and then the next morning when we downloaded it we found this couple here having an electric kiss yeah we had no idea looking at the back of the camera when he brought his camera in that they were there nothing I like better than a storm we look for magic moments during storms and when storm light comes out you know I think there are times we hope we set out to to get something but when we see the final image especially when you can see it bigger on the computer or in print bigger you know it definitely different that was really good they have books and calendars and puzzles that celebrate their views beautiful spectacular Michigan now that's a souvenir we are outside the Cartier Mansion it's a bed and breakfast and this is your house and your business and uh you do a really good job detail is really what you guys are best at tell me the history all right absolutely built in 1905 by Warren Cartier and his wife Kate Warren was an entrepreneur a civil engineer and wanted to come back to lington to make this his forever home home built the house in 18 months oh $100,000 $100,000 $100,000 I know that's what you get for $100,000 come on and he built it across street from his parents and did he want to outo his dad a bit well of course he had to make himself look a little bit better than Dad and and he did so when you bought the Mansion uh was the lington house part of that as well there were actually other owners next door running the lington house and they were looking to retire so they had reached out to us one day and asked if we were interested and we said absolutely it's a really good fit two slightly different types of properties one a little bit more traditional and then of course the modern mansion and then the carriage house so you have you know a little bit of a different feel and price point depending on what people are looking for here's the stable and what did um a Cartier do his father was the lumber Baron um Warren was more of a an entrepreneur one of my favorite stories with with the Cartier family was they brought the bank into lington and uh during the Depression personally stood behind the deposit so that people had the confidence to keep going it's like it's a wonderful life we're off to the king suite I want to move in here did you do the design some of it we did some of it was designed this way when we bought it the belcony was not part of the original design initially and as worm was planning his father strongly encouraged him to build a balcony off of his bedroom because his father envisioned this to be the next Governor's Mansion because he thought his kid was going to be the governor he did wow it's about pressure that was Dad give me a break now I want to go to the bathroom because there's something in there that has to be seen uh first of all of course original yes oh yes original yes uh this is a foot bath this is the piece that needs to be U explored this is a wolf needle shower does water come out of all hundreds of holes the top the sides the ribs and if you want to get uh The Full Experience the bedet down below the bedet is right there we'll finish it off for you so and the instruction said under no circumstance was us women allowed to use it we were way too frail to handle the needle shower so what the first thing I did when I bought the property give me that b give me that usually at breakfast the following morning my first question is tell me about the needle shower and they have so much fun talking about their experience so I have a question did you shower yeah there are a lot of hidden gems in lington and Mason County that visitors Miss so what they've done is they've organized all of those locations in what they call history Trails they celebrate the history of music and Maritime and barn quilts and my favorite sculptures with an attitude like that you're never going to make it to the majors hey Gramps I think that one's big enough to keep what you need to do to get the full story is to call a number there are many ways to commemorate the heritage of lumbering and an art form and artist Robert Dy welcome to floorcraft we so much everybody knows this product yeah so well for Craft's been here uh for 78 years we're just celebrating our 78th anniversary happy anniversary thank you 78 years 78 years and the company really started out as a company that collected and dried oak leaves and then sold them to Local Flores and we've really involved into a company that makes and fabricates a wide variety of Foams for the floral and craft Industries our products can be found in over 20,000 retail locations um Nationwide yeah so you've probably seen our products before all these products are are either made or made and fabricated here in lington and the company started here as well yes we have 240 people here in lington that work here our campus is on about 16 Acres it's kind of massive yeah we got yeah 450,000 F feet wow we have a bunch of employees that have been here for 20 30 years it's a and has the process changed at all a lot as technology has just gotten better particularly with wrapping equipment and Fabrication and Robotics the process is probably the one thing that improves every year for us and how do you make it we extrude the XPS foam then we we fabricate it meaning we cut it down into different sizes and shapes kind of like a sawmill for instance yeah and then we have fabrication equipment that can turn it into cones and balls yeah if you've had kids you've made a solar system out of uh out of those balls we have wrapping ability to be able to wrap it for retail and then we have packaging abilities so it's using vision technology to be able to identify the location of the block and then it creates a pattern and then that pattern gets picked up and loaded into the caves this used to be all done by hand this used to all be done by hand yeah yes I've been here 25 years started in 2000 and you know over the course of a couple decades have really grown to love this yeah we always say that we're part of people's lives and their most important moments so you'll find our products at at weddings you'll find them at birthday parties you'll find them at funerals so all of the important moments in life you'll usually find one of our pieces you're part of it we're part of it if you're from the Midwest I'm sure you are aware of a town or a river or a park named after the French Jesuit missionary Explorer per Marquette per by the way means father in French this is the area where he died in 1675 at the age of 37 he was one of the first Europeans to create a detailed map of the Mississippi River and his further explorations of the Midwest really laid the groundwork for settlers for over 200 years Mason County Historical Society started this back in 76 we've recreated a lot of the local communities in fact the oldest building we believe that's still standing in in the in the county is our Courthouse over there built in 1849 oh nice and then we brought in other buildings many of them authentic but the very old farmhouse that was moved here the school is authentic moved here the town hall is authentic moved here is around 30 buildings but that's if you count the ouses yeah yeah thanks for doing that it was Lumber that really created this part of Michigan oh no question about it this was all covered with white pine trees they were like gold there's belief that there was more income generated from White Pine in Michigan than there was gold in California White Pine has two very distinct properties one of them is it's a softer wood and at those days the uh tools were all hand tools nobody had any power saws so they liked working with pine the other thing about Pine logs even big logs is they float so we were able to harvest from distance and in the spring when the water was the highest you'd have all these logs coming down to the ends of the rivers where the Mills were frequently what happened is they only went so far and then there was a log Jam he actually had men that would go out on there try to find the key log to pull the log out that would let it go sometimes they couldn't find that log or they couldn't remove it so the next step was dynamite and that's what's being used here look at these guys they're like run well exactly I mean they they know what's going to happen now yeah and that's the stump puller dump pullar this is an original Lumber Camp building those two buildings were literally we believe the last camp that existed and so we uh number all the boards disassemble them bring them here and reassemble them we have a lot of photos of lumber camps and in many of them there is one woman and she's the cook who are they what are they doing and are the kids like can we go home my assumption is that's a that's an owner and his wife I think this is the cook and this is older sister or mother and these are the kids and do you think that that her husband is one of the loggers I think you have a better imagination than I well there we go in lington you see a lot of these these multi-game boards that I remember from my childhood it turns out they were made right here in lington what are these game boards called [Music] with these boards behind me the games are endless you can play checkers chess even pool they're called carum boards they originated in India but they were Americanized and made here in lington for over 130 years and you know why John's not here because he knows he would [Music] lose Emy where are we this is the only disc golf store within an hour drive any direction it's called grip and rip dis golf it's just kind of a saying you know with like golfing you grip it and you rip it and with the discs you're going to grip it let it fly right have you ever been in a store with this many frisbees no no no don't ever call it a frisbee it's a they're going to hear you this is what we need we need a driver a driver a mid-ranger midranger and a Putter and a putter these are our frisbees they are our discs these are our discs here we go you ready some practicing nice and doesn't make a difference pointwise if you get it in in is in we got this good one this is a good one all right we're here at the uh what what is this called the tea off and I'm telling you you can't see the basket from here you're good you got to the tree oh nice do you see it yeah I see it you do let's try to make it into that open field good unless there's another tree behind that one that you hit you know this is like the county to play dis golfing there's 14 courses in the county yes but in in 20 M range 39 30 you've got it the third largest course in the entire country is in lington it's called [Music] Goliath oh there we go oh yeah I'm about a half mile this way look at what you did there you go good job girl and you don't have to be good to have fun cuz we had a lot of laughs obviously right if we can play anyone one can [Music] play if you want to experience all of the ecosystems that Michigan has to offer this is the place to come lington State Park you'll find beaches forests marshlands sand dunes and wetlands it's what makes this park so popular over 5,000 Acres 7 miles of Shoreline and it's home to Big Sable Point Lighthouse the last lighthouse on the Great Lakes to be electrified now I'm on this tree I have to get down and I'm in a skirt so Brian cut the [Music] camera 50 years ago everybody in Michigan knew what was going on behind that Hill uh today people are like is that a landfill is that you know but you guys know exactly what's going on here so what we have here is we have one of the largest pump storage hydroelectric facilities in the world we're about 1.6 million customers we can serve it was built from 1969 to 73 uh it comes from a lot of the technology from our original hydro plants uh just used for a different purpose as a pump storage versus just as a traditional damp you can see the six round circles uh so each unit is a generating unit but each unit is also a pump we motorize its generator turn the unit into a pump to actually take the water from the lake and put it into our upper reservoir for use later it's essentially another means is creating a battery and a mechanical form versus chemical form the upper Reservoir is 5 1/2 miles surrounding the wall uh it's 2 and a half miles from north to south and it's about a mile straight across the other side of the wall that we're looking at across from us 28 billion gallons of water water right from the lake has been treated at all it's just no treatment just pumped up and then released back to the units to generate with yeah is this the biggest it is number six in the world as we speak so we fill at night and then during the day uh when the demand starts to creep back up and and load starts to creep back up that's when we'll kick these on this is actually the piece inside doing the work with the water what is this called This is called a runner turbine how's it operate so it spins around in One Direction the water flows through it to actually make the shaft spin to rotate the generator in the other direction it actually acts as the impeller on the pump we took the six blade units that we have here and we replac them with a nine blade unit we got an additional 50 megaw per unit which is why this visual aid is here for everybody to come see it's nice that you have it that you replace it huge environmentally how good is this the most fuel we burn on a given day is in our maintenance drugs is that right this there's no combustion going on it's Just Hydraulics the electricity comes in over the high lines that you see there to actually operate the pumps and then we actually generate and put the power back on those lines yeah so it doesn't really get any cleaner it's really remarkable what goes on here absolutely and there there's a lot of these all over the world uh there's actually very few so in the continental United States there's roughly about 43 why are there not more of these the geographic challenge you have to have the height difference between the body of water that you're going to remove that water from in order to have your Reservoir why don't we have this near my hometown of Milwaukee I can't answer that could you call someone come [Music] on Emmy what did you think of this town that was built on Woods and Water I would totally come again so water people waiting for well that's not I didn't write [Music] it right take a look at that if we miss it we're done we are breaking [Music] up Take a Bow the L's done for the day you're like the belly g king of uh disc golf I wish I knew who he was ready she maybe this is a good spot to stop we thank the underwriters of John McGill's main streets because without them we couldn't make this show your community's best selfie spot is your type from the green circle Trail to Point brewery you'll find more fun in Stevens Point Wisconsin visit okonak Lakes festivals shopping dining the heart of Lake Country my father taught me that to make great bakery you have to do it the right way o Danish Bakery where cringle Traditions begin yes Greendale is beautiful on the outside but it's what's inside that counts who doesn't love opening a door to their happy place whether it's indulging your sweet tooth winding down or exploring your creative side come on in you just got to see [Music] Greendale there's always something shining bright in Sun Prairie Wisconsin Heiser Automotive is honored to help John mcgan and his team arrive safely to many main streets we are committed to remaining true to the Heiser way do what's right for our customers our employees and the communities we serve we are happy to help horican Bank Westbend insurance company the friends of Main Streets and the friends of PBS Wisconsin this cannot be on television

2025-04-21 02:02

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