The CITY OF CHEBOYGAN

My grandparents used to take their young family camping in northern Michigan. It was an inexpensive way to see one of the most beautiful parts of the country. They would camp at Wilderness State park on the Straits of Mackinac. In the days before the construction of the Mackinac Bridge, the state run car ferries would shuttle between the upper peninsula and the lower.

After the death of my grandfather I ran across an envelope of old negatives in a box of rocks.( My grandfather was a rock collector.) In it I found negatives of some old ships. Knowing that they were probably from the straits area, I set out to identify them.

The first ship I was able to identify was the City of Cheboygan. The City of Cheboygan began its life as railroad car ferry Ann Arbor #4. It was launched in 1906, was 258 feet long, and held 24 rail cars. It had a pair of notable incidents. On January 24 1909 near Manistique it ran aground. After futile attempts to power off, two crewmen were sent in a boat to get a tug at Manistique. The men had a hard row to shore and a walk of several miles. When they returned to the scene the ship was gone. They spent the night in an old wrecked schooner and were reunited with the ship the next day. On May 29 of the same year, while loading rail cars at dock, a mistake was made and the vessel was loaded unevenly. In the span of ten minutes the ship rolled over on its port side and came to rest on the bottom. Although no one was injured the Ann Arbor #4 sat on the bottom for over a month while salvagers removed the rail cars through holes cut into its side.

In 1937 the Ann Arbor #4 was sold to the state of Michigan and became the City of Cheboygan. In the winter of 1946-47 a "scooped bow" was added to save time by allowing cars to be driven in one end and driven off the other. On the opening day of the new Mackinac Bridge, the ferries stopped operations and were put up for sale. The once grand City of Cheboygan was turned into a floating warehouse to store potatoes. And sadly, in 1974 she was scrapped in Italy.