During the first decade of the 20th century, though few people noticed, changes began to occur in the Lake Superior copper region. Because the region’s economy was based on mining, mining was the main focus of the residents and businesses of the region, which is probably why so few people paid attention to the changes, so of course, would not have been thought to speculate on their potential implications. The changes began with a man named Horatio Sawyer Earle, a Vermont native who was a traveling salesman of farm equipment.

In 1889, Earle moved to Detroit to sell farm equipment. That was about four years before a machinist’s apprentice in Detroit named Henry Ford built his first internal combustion engine, in 1893. It was a small, single-cylinder gasoline motor that he built on his kitchen table.

While Ford was working with gasoline motors, Earle had been a member of the League of American Wheelmen (later changed to the League of American Bicyclists) since 1880, when the organization was founded. It was a nationwide organization of some 100,000 bicycle enthusiasts who did not like pedaling on muddy roads rutted by horse-drawn wagons. They didn’t particularly care for gravel either, and the League formed to advocate for paved roads and streets. Farmers, whose wagons made a lot of the ruts, were quick to envision the advantages of paved roads, as was the U.S. Postal Service, whose carriers had to endure those same road conditions to ensure that the mail was reaching its rural destinations. The League presented some valid arguments.

Their reasons for better roads emphasized farmers would have an easier time getting their crops to market, children to school and families to church. As the League spread its arguments publicly through published pamphlets and their own magazine, the idea of paved roads and a system of road networks appealed to a growing number of people who used roads. The whole campaign led to the beginning of the national political movement called the Good Roads Movement.

Back in Detroit, Earle and his group, the League of American Wheelmen, in 1892, convinced the Michigan legislature to establish a state highway commission to study the problems and recommend road improvements.

Meanwhile, Henry Ford, who was still working with his internal combustion gas engine. He mounted one on a metal frame fitted with four bicycle wheels. According to the Ford company’s biography on the inventor, In June 1903, after two previous attempts at forming automobile companies, Ford and 12 others invested $28,000 to create Ford Motor Company, which built its first horseless carriage a month later. In 1908, Ford Motor Company rolled out the first Model T.

In 1905, according to the Michigan Department of Transportation, voters in 83 Michigan counties approved an amendment to the state’s constitution authorizing state spending for roads and creating the Michigan State Highway Department. As might be expected, Earle was named as the state’s first highway commissioner.

Meanwhile, the demand for Ford’s Model T overwhelmed his company’s ability to meet the demand. In order to fix that, according to the History Channel, Ford introduced the world’s first moving assembly line for cars in 1913. The Highland Park auto plant could now, according to the Ford company, build a Model T in just 90 minutes. Of course, the new system demanded more employees, which at the time, Ford was paying $2.50 a day, about the same as a laborer in the Lake Superior copper mines. According to the Ford company, “Henry Ford stated: ‘We believe in making 25,000 men prosperous and contented rather than follow the plan of making a few slave drivers in our establishment multi-millionaires.'”

That was all that thousands of Lake Superior workers impacted by the Western Federation of Miners war with the mining companies needed to hear. Thousands boarded trains for Detroit and left the area. Ford’s assembly line drew criticism from his employees, however. So on Jan. 5, 1914, he announced the $5 eight-hour workday, which involved profit-sharing payments. This was at the time mining companies were still operating 10-hour shifts. By reducing the shift hours to eight, Ford created a third shift, enabling him to hire still more employees, inspiring still more out-of-work copper miners to leave the area.

None of these events was mentioned in any of the mining company reports, most likely because none of the directors perceived a connection between bicycles, automobiles, paved roads and mining companies. But, they combined to initiate changes in the Lake Superior district that were not noticed, such as the Michigan Public Act 149 of 1893, which allowed for counties to establish county road commissions through an election called by the County Board of Supervisors. This was followed by Michigan’s Public Highways and Private Road Act 283 of 1909, which was meant to achieve two primary goals: to provide uniformity in road construction and maintenance across the state and to provide cost efficient and high quality road services for local roads.

On April 4, 1910, Houghton County residents voted, 7,100 to 989, to establish a road commission for the improvement and expansion of roads in the county.

“Up until that year,” states the Houghton County Road Commission, “only haphazard improvement of wagon roads into the country, and between population centers and copper mining areas existed.”

Paul La Vanway, in his August 2007 article, A History of Keweenaw County’s Roads and Highways, published in The Superior Signal, wrote that Keweenaw County Road Commission was established in 1913, the same year Ford introduced his assembly line. That same year, he goes on to say, the state legislature passed the State Trunk Line Act, which authorized the routing and designation of a state highway network that initially totaled some 3,000 miles of highway. Previously, the roads, built by mining companies, the military and logging companies, were usually maintained by the townships.

La Vanway wrote that around the time the Keweenaw County Road Commission was formed, a number of road improvement programs were begun, including trunk line construction, bridge repairs and the completion of road improvements from Mohawk to Ahmeek, and south into Houghton County.

As the Houghton County Road Commission states in its history: “The advent of the Model T Ford, of which under 1,000 vehicles existed in Houghton County in 1910, created the impetus to develop a meaningful road system.”

That was in 1910. Next week, we will look at how the improvement of roads in the Copper Country began to impact the region’s economy and workforce, as well the start of gradual cultural changes as a result of the automobile and roads.