NEWAYGO, MI — A jungle of overgrowth hides a decaying ruin along the Muskegon River where the power of water once helped give birth to the city of Newaygo.
For about 60 years, a manufacturer named Joseph Henry Rowe operated a wood products factory in Newaygo next to the railroad bridge, harnessing energy from a historic tributary that once powered early pioneer sawmills.
Today, what’s left of Rowe’s factory is a ruin — a crumbling edifice known mostly to fishermen, teenagers with spray paint and other trespassers. But a new future awaits Pennoyer Creek, which spills like a waterfall from the concrete bowels.
Using a $250,000 state dam safety grant, the Muskegon River Watershed Assembly is planning to re-route the creek out of the factory, reconnect it to the river and enable fish passage for the first time since it was dammed almost 200 years ago.
The grant comes from the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy (EGLE). The project is in early design stages, said watershed assembly director Paul Haan. Soil testing, advance engineering and permitting steps are yet to follow.
“The current talk is of re-aligning the creek out from underneath the foundation of the old factory and daylighting it — getting it up above the surface, not putting it in the culvert or anything, but getting it to more resemble a naturally-flowing stream,” he said.
Property owners are excited for the changes.
The creek mouth and ruin are owned by the Wisner family, which operate a canoe livery in downtown Newaygo across the river.
Livery owner Rachel Wisner said her father, Robert, acquired the land decades ago after a fire at the old factory. The 1-acre property is zoned residential and has been listed for several years but is difficult to access and poses development challenges.
Family members once envisioned building a hotel and restaurant on site but have mostly held onto the property as vacant space sometimes used for storage, Wisner said.
Today, they are focused on making it safe.
“This is literally the first dam in the entire Muskegon River watershed and it’s going to be removed,” Wisner said. “There’s just a really cool history that people don’t realize.”
Ruin site figures prominently in early pioneer settlement
Although the property doesn’t feature a historical marker, it certainly deserves one. The creek and surrounding land figure prominently into the story of European settlement in Newaygo County along the Muskegon River during its lumbering heyday.
Before a concrete factory was erected at its mouth, Pennoyer Creek was the cradle of pioneer logging and land claims in the area. In 1837, Augustus Pennoyer built a sawmill there as part of a nascent lumbering effort launched out of early Chicago. The Pennoyer Mill quickly attracted settlers who founded the village of Newaygo and its lumber was the first to be floated downriver and shipped out of the new port in Muskegon.
According to archival records, the mill operated until 1873 — about 32 years after Pennoyer and his brother Frederick died in 1841 aboard the schooner Post Boy, which exploded in Lake Michigan while they were en route with supplies for Newaygo.
The exact location of the mill isn’t known, but a historical review by Grand Valley State University and state of Michigan researchers suggest may have been upstream of the creek mouth, in an area reconfigured in the 1980s by construction of the M-37 bridge.
In 1973, old timbers thought to be part of the original mill and dam surfaced while parts of the Rowe factory were being removed.
An undated photo of the Henry Rowe Manufacturing Co. building along the Muskegon River in Newaygo, Mich.Heritage Museum of Newaygo County
The Henry Rowe Manufacturing Co. opened in 1905, expanding on the site of a furniture factory built in 1884 using bricks from the nearby Newaygo Portland Cement Co., which sourced clay from the riverbank and marl from lakes drained by Pennoyer Creek.
The company made wooden products such as benches, paddles, plugs, handles, bushings, dowels, spindles and decorative interior moldings such as patterned rosettes.
The factory lasted until 1967, when a fire ended the business.
Restoration vision includes upstream dam removals
Today, elements of Rowe’s operation remain on site.
The concrete façade which the creek spills through hides an old turbine. The creek itself flows through the interior foundation — bisected behind the structure by twin culverts that direct the flow into the building and also through a metal chute.
The chute, which arcs the creek water into the river next to the railroad trestle, was originally made of concrete and can be seen in old historic photos of the factory. Wisner said her father rebuilt the chute out of steel drums years ago.
When the creek daylighting begins, both Wisner and Haan said it’s likely that some of the ruin foundation will need to be removed, “but I feel like we should at least take that turbine and put it in a museum or something,” Wisner said.
Due to riverbank elevations, a new creek design will likely need to incorporate meandering switchbacks to enable fish passage, Wisner said. The ultimate restoration vision also includes removing two upstream dams as well. The Muskegon River Watershed Assembly received another $694,000 in state grants over the last two years for removing one of those.
Because Pennoyer Creek is downstream of Croton Dam, the lowermost on the Muskegon River, and is fed by cold groundwater after it exits a chain of lakes to the north, it’s expected to provide spawning habitat for migratory fish such as salmon or steelhead.
Haan estimated the final cost of restoring the Pennoyer Creek mouth will exceed $1 million, depending on how much concrete foundation needs to be removed.
“The less concrete that has to get moved is probably a good thing,” he said. “Of course, you still have the inherent hazard in the concrete, but if you get the water out from underneath it, at least you’ve stemmed the degradation.”
Wisner is looking forward seeing the property become safe for public access.
“Right now, we don’t really want people over there because it’s not safe,” she said. “It would be nice to let people access that creek once it’s usable and fishable.”
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