Greater West Bloomfield Historical Society

Wayside Sign – Sharing the Ride on the Westacres Community Bus

GWBHS — Mon, 29 Jul 2013 14:17:35 +0000

They turned on their porchlights to signal the bus to pick them up for the ride to work at the Chrysler plant in Highland Park. In 1939 nine Westacres residents bought a used bus to share the cost of commuting to work. They formed the Westacres Chrysler Employee Transportation Association (WACETA) which grew to 25 workers paying dues for the purchase and operation of a series of buses over the years. They issued stock, elected officials, and shared maintenance and driving duties. Over its 50 years, this program gained national attention as America’s longest-running, privately-funded ride share program.

Wayside Sign – Remembering Historic Railways on the West Bloomfield Trail

GWBHS — Mon, 29 Jul 2013 14:16:51 +0000

The West Bloomfield Trail was once a railbed of the Grand Trunk Railroad, built through the region in the 1880s to serve far-flung agriculture and industry. A mile down from here, where the trail passes Cass Lake Road, the trail meets the trace of a light rail electric trolley track that was built in 1899. It served communities from Pontiac through Farmington to Detroit, and later became part of the larger Detroit United Railway (DUR). Your journey through history on the trail follows the route of the trolley track and the Grand Trunk rail, running side-by-side, as far as Orchard Lake Road.

Wayside Sign – West Bloomfield Trail: Exploring the Tale of the Rail

GWBHS — Mon, 29 Jul 2013 14:16:15 +0000

Railroad locomotives thundered through this countryside for more than 130 years. The Michigan Air Line Railway was completed in 1884, a branch of the historic Grand Trunk Railway that became a vital shipping network between manufacturing centers of the automotive industry in lower Michigan. As this railway was later abandoned, the rails were torn up and the quiet natural corridor preserved. The West Bloomfield Trail is a 6.83 mile-long portion of the old railway offering remarkable interaction with nature while it enriches the community.

Wayside Sign – Westacres Community: New Life for Auto Workers

GWBHS — Mon, 29 Jul 2013 14:14:55 +0000

Born with great purpose in the Great Depression, Westacres endures as a strong West Bloomfield Community. In 1936, U.S. Senator from Michigan, James Couzens pooled $550,000 of his own money with $300,000 of federal funds to establish this neighborhood of 150 homes for low-income automotive factory workers. Home ownership included an acre of land and encouraged farming for food and self-sufficiency. Oakland Housing Inc. also assisted residents to develop a satisfactory communal life and financed supplemental enterprises.

Wayside Sign – Settling the Dust: The Countryside Improvement Association

GWBHS — Mon, 29 Jul 2013 14:09:52 +0000

The lakes and landscapes of Oakland County weren’t ready for the automobile in the early 1900s. Weekend visitors, in noisy “self-propelled” vehicles, churned up dust on unpaved roads and trespassed on private property. To address these difficulties, women from Pine and Orchard Lakes formed the Countryside Improvement Association in 1911. Their early fundraising paid to settle the dust by spraying oil on roads. Further efforts improved the region’s roads and signs, and defined road rules and property rights. Countryside fundraising continues to support charities and scholarships.

Camp Tinega – Leona Mason Heitsch

GWBHS — Sat, 13 Apr 2013 15:52:58 +0000

“Regarding Camp Tinega, Protestant Children’s Home: My father was orchard manager of Walnut Glen Fruit Farms, which was on the corner of Middlebelt and Lone Pine, SW. The end of the “”new orchard”” on the west was bordered by The Protestant Children’s Home. The boys often climbed the fence to enjoy “”Egg Lake”” (now Bloomfield, I think). One child drowned there, one child left a partially carved out wooden boat, which I still have, we never saw the children, they came cautiously and of course without the knowledge of the staff at the camp. After school started a couple of the boys would hike to the corner of Middlebelt and Lone Pine and ride with Dad and me to Pine Lake School, time frame from 1939 to the early forties. One was Norman Krushka (spelling?). The two of them were very subdued young teens, one could feel their emotional state, even if one was younger than they were. Leona Mason Heitsch”

Max Klein Painter inventor

GWBHS — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 04:39:14 +0000

Max Klein was the man who invented (or co-invented) paint-by-numbers, the fad that swept the nation in the early 1950s. In 1956 he sold his interest in the painting business (Craft Master brand) and began a successful career in plastics. Later in life, Max resided in West Bloomfield until his death on 20 May 1993. I am writing a brief biographical sketch of Max and would like to know if you have in your holdings any information relating to him?

Thanking you in advance for the favor of your reply, I am,

Le Roy G. Barnett PhD
Contributing Editor
CHRONICLE Magazine
Historical Society of Michigan

Chief Pontiac Indian Bust

GWBHS — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 04:37:36 +0000

Ceramic bust of Native American Chief Pontiac donated February 2013 by James Bowers which now resides in the museum.

Leona & C.W. Heitsch

GWBHS — Wed, 04 Aug 2004 05:00:00 +0000

It is so cold this morning it reminds me of my Michigan roots, a kid on the farm. Mom would get up and the first thing I’d hear would be her shaking the grate on the furnace, which was in the basement under my bedroom, getting the ashes down to where she could remove them and then throw more coal on the faltering fire, then up to get breakfast for Dad and me (he out in the barn early, with Curly the cow and the heifer and letting the horses out to drink at the big tank in the barnyard, etc. and to fill mangers with hay and grain. all with snow surrounding, often more falling. After Dad drove me to school, mom would put on her denim jacket, made by the prisoners at Jackson Prison, go out to the apple shed, and the day would begin…she’d have left enough logs in the black range in the kitchen to go until noon. There were tall kerosene heaters which did about nothing, to put by the people who sorted the apples…Mr. Harger, who was also Pine Lake School Super, Mom and Dad. There were sometimes l7,000 bushels of apples in the apple storage, stacked way above Dad’s head and propped to keep from falling with 2×4 s in several places. A track ran down the middle of the storage,it stood about 2 1/2 feet above the floor, and crates were put on the track to push them out to the sorting shed, which used to be a pig pen before we got there. Mr. Harger poured bushels into the “maw” and the apples were carried on a belt with holes to capture and hold big apples and let the little ones drop into a crate by the side, the big apples went into a polisher, rotating brushes which directed apples forward with flopping rags above to polish them, they spilled out into the sorting area, long round wooden rods wrapped with rope to keep the apples advancing while mom picked off the bad apples to put in a crate beside her, they then spilled into three bins, sorted again by belts with holes, and Dad crated the apples in paper lined crates (we did a hundred of these each time he was to drive a load to the Union Produce Terminal in Detroit) and stacked them for loading on the the 39 Dodge for a trip to Detroit. (These trips were early in the AM, so he could be back to Walnut Glen Fruit Farms to work up more apples). It was cold on mother’s toes, I am sure, standing there all day, even with a kerosene heater not too far away. With temperatures that cold, apples could not be forever left in the sorting room, or on the truck, they would freeze. Yet in all those years of sorting, 1939 through years in the 50s, nothing ever froze. Mom would go in to fix lunch, Mr. Harger would come in and eat his packed lunch in the kitchen, and they’d go back, time out for Dad to come and get me from Pine Lake School. I’d help some until time for Mr. Harger to go home and for us to do the chores in the barn, and have supper. Sometimes it was up to me to put some more wood in the kitchen range and move the huge aluminum teakettles over from the side of the range, so they would be boiling when Mom came in. (No piped hot water, the big kettles were our supply for dishwashing). The reason I started this was to explain my mother. Dad and I decided, one Christmas, that she should have something warmer than the Jackson Prison denim. We got, from an Army surplus store, a coat that would serve to keep a trooper warm no matter what. So proud we were. Mother opened the package at Christmas, told us that her denim coat was good enough and she wanted to take our purchase back and go to Sears in Pontiac and buy curtains for the dining room, which served as living room too, as the living room was closed off for the winter, to keep the house warmer. She did it, and bought a curtain stretcher a thing which had small thin nails all along it, and could be set up to fit whatever size curtain you had, you could put on several curtains. So the morning sun came up through fresh new curtains, I kind of wish I had kept a swatch of one of them, just to show the pattern mother chose. It is cold enough today in Missouri to think of this, but no Michigan like crunch of snow, just bare ground and hungry birds flocking to feeders.

Thaddeus Seeley Article

GWBHS — Tue, 03 Aug 2004 05:00:00 +0000

Thaddeus Seeley Article