As you read this you are standing squarely in the Old Military Highway. Well, at least precisely where this foot and wagon road, established some one hundred and forty years ago, passed. It was in 1864 that President Lincoln commissioned a military road from Fort Howard (now Green Bay) to Fort Wilkins at the tip of the Keweenaw. The military did not make extensive use of the Highway, but everyone else did. Some of the route had been used earlier by Native Americans. For decades after its establishment, the ‘highway’ carried trappers and their fur, families settling in the virgin territory, supplies for these families, wagon loads of copper, etc.

Today, Routes US 45 and Mich. 26 follow some of the same route. And, more recently, this little piece right here, served the residents on either side as a short cut. Ruts from the old wagons were still visible when Leona Gourd Collins and her husband Jim Collins purchased, in 1954, the log cabin which lay to the east. This was Lot 17 of the Agate Harbor Land Pool which had, in 1919, become the holder of the land along this ‘south shore’ as well as the two ‘fingers’ which form Agate Harbor. Traces of the Old Military Highway could be spotted through several of the Pool’s south shore lots.

When Margaret (Peg) Gourd Malone and her husband John Malone built a cottage to the west, the old track continued to serve as a route to Aunt Leona’s. Perhaps the last vehicle to use the Highway was the truck and trailer which maneuvered this storage shed into place in 1990. It had been purchased by the current residents, Mary Gourd Thomas and her husband, Clint Thomas.
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