Oceana was, as we all well know by now, birthed by the lumber boom. But for every tree that was felled, cut, and shipped, there must have been wastage. Broken limbs, boards too short, trees too bent, etc. Whatever happened to all of those? Well, the answer is they were probably turned into charcoal.
The Spring Lake Iron Company in Fruitport built several charcoal kilns throughout Oceana County along the railway, so as to fuel their foundry. The first was in Shelby. It consisted of 11 kilns and consumed 1,200 cords of lumber per month. One cord of lumber is 128 cubic feet, so that means these kilns were being fed 153,600 cubic feet of lumber each month, which produced about 45,000 bushels of charcoal. The capacity of each kiln was about 75 cords of lumber, and it cost $7,000 to construct the kilns. The whole operation was run by a man named Daniel H. Rankin, and the kilns employed 25 men, plus an additional 50 choppers.
The Shelby kilns were constructed in September 1879, but evidently the Spring Lake Iron Company’s furnaces were hungry, because in November of that same year they constructed 10 more 75-cord kilns near Mears, in Golden Township. These kilns produced 40,000 bushels of charcoal monthly and employed 70 men. It was also maintained and operated by D. H. Rankin. In Page’s History of Oceana it is written that, “The importance to Shelby and Mears of this industry may be appreciated by knowing that Mr. Rankin pays out monthly over $5,000 and has shipped from Shelby alone 1,000,000 pounds of coal in a month.” If we adjust that $5,000 for inflation, we are looking at a value somewhere near $155,000 today.
Lastly, more coal kilns were constructed in New Era in April 1880, this time maintained by the company superintendent himself, Duncan S. Rankin. This operation was also smaller than the Shelby one, having only 10 kilns of 50-cord capacities. They produced about 30,000 bushels of coal per month, and the cost of construction was $5,000.
To borrow again from the words of Page’s history, “This immense consumption of wood,—nearly 4,000 cords a month,—must tell upon the supply,” he then goes on to say, “but there is one feature that deserves to be mentioned,—that any kind of broken wood or branches may be manufactured into charcoal, which utilizes what otherwise would be wasted.” All in all, these kilns operated for about 20 years, and while they may not stand today, for a while they played an important role in our communities, granting hundreds of jobs and supporting local families.
