ALCONA CORRESPONDENCE.
Alcona, November 30th, 1877.
Dear Review:--I wish to inform you that the township of Alcona will be the theater of extensive lumber operations this winter. There are in this township between six and seven hundred men engaged in fourteen lumber camps, making square timber, long timber, and cutting short logs and skidding the same. There are ten camps in the vicinity of Hubbard and Roe's Lakes. More of the short logs will go into Hubbard Lake, thence to Alpena, and give employment to hundreds of hands there. The square timber and long timber will be banked on Lake Huron from Harrisville to South Point, a distance of eighteen miles along the shore, at different points. Alger & Co. are the most extensive firm on the shore. Beard & Co., Cushman, Smith & Comstock, are all extensive lumbermen, and are well known in the lumbering business. There are, also, any amount of jobbers engaged by the different firms.
It has rained almost every day for the last two months, and the roads have become almost impassable. Teams could haul only from eight to ten hundred at a load of supplies to camp. The weather looks more favorable at present, and the roads are freezing up, but not enough, yet, to keep a horse from breaking through.
The people of the township have reason to thank God for His kind care and protection during the past year. There have been but three deaths in the township--two infants, by cause unknown, and one young man by small pox. This disease broke out in the northwest portion of the township. There were five others taken down with the contagion, but they were successfully treated by Dr. Shelton, of Alpena, and recovered. The disease was prevented from spreading over the township and county by the prompt action of the Board of Health, who furnished Dr. Shelton with whatever he required for the comfort of the patients after they were driven into the swamp, by the burning of the lumber camp to which they were removed when O'Dell's house was burned. In this swamp the Dr. ministered to the needs of his patients for about five weeks--with Hemlock boughs and Cedar bark to protect them from the weather--and he is entitled to the thanks and gratitude of the people of this county, for successfully treating his patients under such circumstances, and for preventing the spread of the loathsome disease.
We as a community have reason to be thankful to God for the abundant harvest of the present year, in all parts of the township.
We as a community have reason to be thankful to God for the abundant harvest of the present year, in all parts of the township.
The great question of to-day is the felling of the Pine, and how to get it to the banking grounds. R. A. Alger & Co. have a sure thing, if their "Ball of the Woods" has arrived trees below.
I am, &c.
Achid.