The View from Sand Island: Reconsidering the Peripheral Economy, 1880–1940

JAMES FELDMAN

The bird's-eye view that western historians typically assume to analyze economic development directs attention away from the point of production and obscures the local conditions that shaped economic life in the rural West. On Sand Island, Wisconsin, seasonal limitations, local transportation patterns, and the intersections of seemingly distinct industries dictated the daily activities of an economic frontier.
ON 4 OCTOBER 1922, THE STEAMER C. W. Turner made its tri-weekly stop at the East Bay of Sand Island, a small island off northern Wisconsin's Lake Superior shore and home to a small community of fishermen. The dilapidated steamer—it had been in constant use since 1900 and it reeked of fish—might seem an unlikely symbol of the multifaceted economy of northern Wisconsin and other parts of the rural West. But the Turner could be just that. The collection of the daily catch in service of the commercial fishing industry provided the primary reason for the Turner's visit to Sand Island. The Booth Fisheries Company, the largest fishpacking firm on the Great Lakes, dispatched the steamer from its base in Bayfield, Wisconsin, to pick up the whitefish and lake trout caught by the island fishermen, and to drop off the ice needed to keep the next catch fresh until its return. But the Turner did more than pick up fish and deliver ice; it also carried paying customers enjoying a cruise among the scenic Apostle Islands. Some of the passengers might even have disembarked on Sand Island for an extended stay. And when the Turner pulled away from the Sand Island dock, it bore more than just fish and tourists. Crates of berries, jugs of cream, bushels of potatoes, and other island produce were secured to the deck in all available space. This was no simple fishing boat. This was no simple economy.	1
Figure 1. The Booth Fisheries Company tug C. W. Turner at rest at a Sand Island dock, preparing to load a cargo of fresh fish, agricultural produce, dairy products, and, perhaps, tourists. Photo courtesy Apostle Islands National Lakeshore.
Traditional explanations of economic development in the American West trace the expansion of markets, the spread of transportation networks, and the flow of capital—not the cargo of a beat-up fishing tug like the Turner. National, and even international, economic forces determined the growth or decline of Bayfield and countless other frontier towns and cities. Markets, capital, and railroads are at the center of most scholarly explorations of the economic history of the American West, a region characterized as a vast hinterland, a key supplier of natural resources to an expanding, international capitalist economy. As persuasive as these interpretations are for large, region-wide patterns of economic growth, however, they do not adequately explain the resource, extraction-based economies of the rural West. The bird's-eye view historians typically assume to analyze regional growth directs attention away from the places where the resource extraction occurred and obscures the local conditions that also helped to shape economic development. Seasonal limitations, local transportation patterns, and the intersections of ostensibly distinct industries reinforced each other, dictating the daily activities of the men and women who worked in the West's extractive industries. Well into the twentieth century, the residents of Sand Island and other parts of the rural West maintained a seasonal, diversified economy shaped as much by local conditions like the C. W. Turner's ability to carry multiple cargoes as by impersonal market forces. They mixed and matched different economic activities, worked in many industries at once, and took advantage of even the smallest opportunities. Tracking these local patterns, intersections, and strategies is essential to understanding the turn-of-the-century economy of the Bayfield Peninsula and other parts of the rural West.	. . .