[MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] >> the side of a river helped shape our community that provided a water source and support for ecosystems and created transportation routes from the saginaw bay into the valley.

people came together to trade at sites near the river and eventually cities like saginaw city and east saginaw were established by people who had big dreams for saginaw.

people found the marshy land near the river difficult.

the land wasn't easy to farm like it was downstate and the mosquitoes spread illness.

but the twenty miles of the site in a river did have branches of many other rivers called tributaries flowing into it.

and those rivers, eight hundred sixty-four miles worth joined up to the side of a river to flow out to the saginaw bay, making saginaw an ideal place for transporting resources to the great lakes and beyond.

[MUSIC] in the eighteen hundreds, the main resource michigan offered the world was lumber in the form of tree logs.

after the civil war, many people flock to sagging off because of the growing number of jobs in the lumber industry.

by this time, the trees in the eastern united states had been cut down and lumber companies look for other forest of white pine trees and michigan became the next source of trees to harvest for lumber for buildings and more as sawmills dotted the banks of the river.

the river change, too.

the values which had proved useful for storing logs before they were cut into planks soon couldn't hold all the logs that were floated down from the log camps and saginaw boom.

companies cut into the banks to create new man made by use.

they built docks in wards which also change the banks of the river.

the saginaw has continued to grow.

and at one point there were more than one hundred sawmills along the banks of the sabinal river.

first a plank road and then railroads connected east saginaw to cities downstate east saginaw became the wealthiest of the to saginaw was because they had the advantage of the river to transport lumber and materials.

mills could be huge operations with their own repair and supply shops.

wars drying yard.

salt works and even boarding houses for the workers.

the peak year for lumber was eighteen.

eighty-two win.

over a billion board feet of lumber planks were cut [MUSIC] in the lumber industry.

everyone had their own special job.

lumberjacks worked in the lumber camps in the woods and the fellers and sawyer's cut down the trees and prep them for transport motors and teamsters move the logs to the river banks over frozen winter drought camp said blacksmiths to repair tools and cooks to keep everyone fed.

in the spring.

the logs were floated down the rivers to the sawmills and the river menus there pvs the move, the logs in an orderly fashion to track which logs belong to which boone company.

a lot mark was hammered into.

each saw logs at at the sawmills.

the mill workers caught logs into planks and bundled them to be shipped out for sale all around the united states.

others turned the scrap and the shingles for houses and bundle them for sale.

during the lumbering era sagging, our lumber workers cut over twenty-two billion board feet of lumber.

that's enough to build five sidewalks, four feet wide from the earth to the moon.

after all, the trees were cut down in michigan, the lumber companies move their logging operations westward that left many people in the saginaw valley without work or prospects, but sagging.

i was ready to reinvent itself.

this program was made possible by a grant from cta community telecommunications network,