In 1889, a French immigrant named Leo M. Geismar became the first settler in Stannard Township, Ontonagon County, in 1889. Like many other settlers, Geismar secured 160 acres through the Homestead Act of 1862. Geismar’s farm was located on St. Collins Road.

Geismar wasn’t the typical 19th century homesteader. Educated in the field of practical scientific farming in Paris and Berlin, he was something of an expert on sugar beet production, which would become evident in his work in the first decade of the 20th century. He successfully operated his farm until 1900, when he sold it to James Howlett when he (Geismar) became superintendent of the experimental farm at Chatham, in Rock River Township, Alger County. It had begun as an experimental station by the Michigan Board of Agriculture (BOA) in 1899, when the state legislature realized that soil and climate in the U.P. were different from the rest of the state. Legislators decided the U.P. needed additional study. The state appropriated $5,000 for the Board of Agriculture “to carry on such experiments pertaining to agriculture” as, in its judgment, would ber most beneficial to the agricultural interests of the U.P.

The Munising Railway Company donated 160 acres of land north of Chatham to the BOA for the station, and cleared 20 acres for field experiments and demonstration. About a decade later, the BOA concluded that the livestock industry was the basis of permanent agriculture. Finding the original 160 acre station not large enough for experimentation with livestock on a large scale, they negotiated with the Cleveland Cliffs Iron Company for additional land, and CCI donated 620 acres to the project. Geismar was appointed superintendent of the station in the spring of 1900. Geisler held the position until 1912, when he became the Agricultural Extension Agent for Houghton County.

In the 1902 Annual Report of the Experiment Station of Michigan State Agricultural College, the opening paragraph under General Outlook addressed “the investigation of various problems concerned in the production of sugar beets and the utilization of they by-products –“

A decade later, Geismar left the experimental farm to become Houghton County’s agricultural agent. He continued instructing local farmers in methods of scientific agriculture.

The Report of county agricultural agent work in Michigan for 1916 included Geismar’s spending nine days in the field, in June, working for selection and treatment of seed oats and potatoes, and another five days working for the improvement of dairy cattle.

Additionally, Geismar spent we days giving pruning and insect spraying demonstrations in small orchards. The State Board of Agriculture was thoroughly dedicated to promoting modern, scientific methods.

In Ontonagon County, Agent R.W. Carr worked through the month of June, 1916, with local farmers on potato improvement, with drainage of soils in Ewen, held a meeting in Gwinn on livestock improvement, and instructed on poultry house construction and poultry care.

The report offers a window through which to glimpse the expansion, development and modernization of farming in the Lake Superior copper region, at the time when the mining companies were experiencing their greatest profits, due to the Great War raging in Europe, as well as severe shortages of workers.

“The demand for our product in 1916 has been greater than any previous year in the Company’s history,” the Annual Report of the Copper Range Company for 1916 boasted. The financials for that year confirm the company’s profits. In 1915, dividends paid out totaled just under $2 million. A year later, that number had doubled to just under $4 million.

Overall, however, while agriculture in the region continued to expand, copper production continued to decline.

Production at the Osceola company, for example, dropped by 3,500,000 pounds between 1916 and 1917. While production at the North Kearsarge increased. Like all the other mines in the region, however, the North Kearsarge was plagued with a labor shortage, compelling the company to experiment with electric haulage underground. In the South Kearsarge Branch, production in 1917 was one-third less than the previous year, again, owed partially to the scarcity of trammers.

In 1917, the Tamarack Mining Company went out of existence after the Calumet and Hecla company acquired its assets and dissolved it. The Houghton County Circuit Court ordered the Trimountain Mining Company to dissolved in January, 1916, but was appealed by dissenting stockholders and in 1918, the Michigan Supreme Court reversed the decision. From 1916 to 1917, the Trimountain’s production had dropped by almost 2.5 million pounds.

Along with the others, production at the Victoria, Wyandot, and Wolverine mines suffered due to severe shortages of labor, particularly trammers.

While the automobile’s increasing popularity brought more and more tourists to the copper region, new businesses continued to spring up to greet them. Hotels, gas stations, parts and supply stores, restaurants, automobile dealerships, all contributed to changing culture in the region.

Meanwhile, as the post-war copper market negatively impacted the Lake Superior region, regional agriculture was promoted across the country. The Volime 1,1918 edition of Cut-Over Lands, a publication devoted to the conversion of cut-over timberlands to and their most productive use for farming, stock raising, and other agricultural pursuits, included a feature titled, “Clover-Land” — The Upper Peninsula of Michigan.

“Cloverland,” the article touted, “is the greatest dairying and livestock region in the United States, if not the world.” The opinion was that of Frank J. Hagenbarth, president of the National Wool Growers’ Association, in Salt Lake City.

Timber harvest, lumber mills, agriculture, the rise of factories outside the region, new businesses in the region, all contributed to the labor shortages suffered by the copper mines. The Copper Country, like the rest of America, was diversifying. It had survived the frontier phase, and by the turn of the 20th century, had become a major industrial complex with tens of thousands of residents eager to improve their standard of living beyond what the mining companies’ corporate paternalism felt they should have. More and more, the residents came to believe they could do better on their own than work for the mining companies that relied on paternalism to keep wages low.