SMELTANIA: A CITY ON ICE
By Bob Morgridge
Contributing Writer
At the turn of the century, Boyne City was a busy lumbering town, but the lumbering boom faded in the early 1920s. The lumberjacks and others packed their bags and left. The community settled down to hard times with the advent of the depression in the 1930s. Only the tannery provided many of the citizens with work. During this time, local people found that they could find a meal and earn a living by catching smelt and selling them for a penny or two apiece to downstate restaurants. The smelt were packed in dry ice and shipped. It is said that one could survive economically by catching and selling a hundred smelt a day.
The first smelt were dipped in the Boyne River around 1929. Residents also fished for smelt off the city docks. Around 1937, an amazing phenomenon began off the shores of Boyne City. When Old King Winter stilled the turbulent waters of Lake Charlevoix with a thick blanket of ice, a new city emerged. The city was called Smeltania, and to the best of our knowledge, it was the only city in the world built on ice.
In 1937, Smeltania was organized and Bill Smith was elected mayor. Bill Schaller, owner of the present-day Petoskey News Review, was the city manager. Guy Baker, the publisher of the Boyne Citizen, recorded the proceedings of the village. Smeltania was their merry-go-round and they thrived on trying to get the best of each other. By the winter of 1939-1940 the fame of the village of 300 inhabitants had spread nationwide.
On March 4, 1940, Life Magazine ran a spread of pictures on Smeltania. A few days later, on March 9, 1940, a major article appeared in Collier’s Magazine. The article was written by Quentin Reynolds, who came to the ice city and spent several days wandering around interviewing the fishermen. “Hizzoner” Mayor Bill Smith told Reynolds, that “I’m the mayor of the darnedest city in the world.” Smith said, “We have no closing laws here in Smeltania. Matter of fact, most of our citizens stay up all night. We got a police force, but they don’t have much to do. About the only complaint we ever get from our people is when there is too much water in the streets.”
At least half of the citizens of Smeltania supported themselves and their families by fishing through the ice. Many of these families would have been on relief during the depression without Smeltania. Relief and charity were humiliating words to the people of Boyne — they’d rather work. Boyne City solved its problem by creating a city — a city that was born at the beginning of each winter and died each spring. No citizen ever became rich, no matter how long they worked. Smelt sold for one cent each during the depression and two cents apiece after World War II. The average catch a night was about one hundred.
The citizens of Smeltania lived in one-room shacks about six feet high, eight feet long and six feet wide. They were all one-room shanties and they cost anywhere from nothing to 10 dollars to build. Usually, the citizens built their own. All they needed were a few beams, planks, some thin crate boards, a roll of tar paper, a handful of nails, a saw and a hammer, and there you were. A few shanties even had windows with curtains. Of course, a pennant added a personal touch. The floor of each shanty was ice. There might be a few water spots here and there. According to Bill Underhill you only needed a six-inch hole for smelt fishing but the idea in a fish shanty was to have a big hole so that it was easy to keep open.
From one day to the next, Smeltania never looked the same because the “tar-skins” were frequently moved about. And every day new squatters appeared on the ice. Villagers often complained about claim jumpers. Resident smelters would prepare their nicely cut holes with expectations of moving a house on the spot the following day. When they returned in the morning, lo and behold, some brother smelter had claimed the territory as his own. Sometimes the shanties just moved. In 1939 it was reported that fish shanties were torn from their moorings and the sportsmen were taken for a free ride under protest as a raging gale refused to abate.
Most of the shanties had two holes, although some had as many as six or eight holes. Light was provided by lanterns or bulbs wired to batteries. Wood or gas stoves were used for heat. Sometimes wood stoves just got too hot and the fishermen would have to open a window or the door. There were times when they would just have to leave the shanty.
Bill Schaller, the city manager of Smeltania, was questioned about a fire. Schaller said he couldn’t understand how three shanties could burn when he had provided a fire plug with thousands of gallons of water for each house.
Small minnows sized a 1/2 inch to 1&1/2 inches were normally used for bait. Many of the local fishermen trapped or netted their own minnows in the lake or streams. In order to ensure an accessible supply during the winter, some smelters decided to keep them in their family bathtubs at home. It was probably okay because many a time husband and wife teamed up to catch their 100 or more smelt every night. Many smelters, out of necessity, bought their minnows at H.O. Wilds’ Bait Shop which, at that time, was located just east of the Dairy Queen. Anyway, Wilds, a short, small man with white hair, had a large minnow tank and he stocked it with minnows that he trapped or netted in Mud Lake (sometimes called Forest Lake).
According to Bill Underhill, the size of the smelt “varied according to the years.” Bill said, “I think it was according to the year they were hatched, and not food. One year you get a run of big two or three-year-old smelt and the next year you get a run of little one-year-old smelt. I don’t think it had too much to do with their food supply because when they died off; we picked up all sizes of smelt along the shoreline. I think it was just the year they were born.” Kate Hartlep said the smelt could run from four to nine inches long, but some could be 12 inches long.
In fishing for smelt, two hooks were usually attached to the line. When a bite was felt by the fisherman, he reeled in the line with a reel rigged to the wall or ceiling of the shanty. It was a lot quicker than using your hands. A bicycle wheel made a popular reel.
Sometimes at night a light was used to attract the smelt. An electric light bulb, sealed in a jar and lighted by an automobile battery, was suspended four feet below the surface. The results were usually a good catch of smelt. What a chore it must have been pulling the battery on a sled on and off the ice to recharge it!
If you got hungry in 1940 while fishing, all you had to do was walk over to Bill and Bea Erber’s restaurant called the Smeltania Trading Post. It was located over 50 feet of water. The Erbers cooked a lot of their food at their restaurant on the southwest corner of Lake and Water Streets and delivered it to their fish shanty restaurant. You could trade your fresh smelt for sandwiches, fried smelt and coffee. They usually served coffee to 50 people every night. According to Bill Underhill, “they ran the restaurant for a couple of years until one day the manager and cash register disappeared. They used a set of hooks to find the cash register at the bottom of the lake. I don’t know if they ever found the manager.”
Most of the smelters stayed until they caught their hundred smelt before heading home. However, one could get lost in a blizzard on one’s way home. One time, Bill Smith got lost. He said, “I was coming back from the city one night and I got completely lost. I wound up miles out of my way. I decided we’d have a proper street leading from Smeltania to Boyne City. So I got a bunch of Christmas trees and planted them in the ice at intervals of about ten feet.” Street signs were erected and now fishermen could make their way safely home along Smith Boulevard. That is how the local tradition of having a broad highway outlined with Christmas trees got started.
Rather than walk, some people hired a taxi to ferry them out to Smeltania for 15 cents a ride. Most tourists hired a taxi and they didn’t usually come to Boyne City until Wallace Earl, the Voice of Smeltania, broadcast on his short-wave radio that the ice was firm and the smelt were biting.
Naturally, some people drove their cars or trucks out on the ice. One night Harry Parker, the founder of Parker Motor Freight, was fishing with his buddies. They ran out of liquids, so Harry and a friend made a beer run to Boyne City. Well, his vehicle started to break through the ice. They immediately thrust the doors open and each door hung on the edge of the ice. The truck swung back and forth like a teeter-totter as they made their escape. Seconds later the beer truck disappeared in 30 feet of water. To the dismay of the fishermen, Parker’s car kept going in circles tangling all their lines. Parker threatened to sue the mayor of Smeltania for 100,000 smelt because his car fell through the ice on Smith Boulevard. Asked if he was responsible, Mayor Smith said, “absolutely not, Parker’s car was 100 yards off the boulevard and besides he drove right through a detour sign.”
A number of local people rented shanties, including Bill Underhill. At one time, he had 27 shanties to rent. Bill said that he got a dollar a line for renting a shanty. He said, “one of my funniest experiences was with Harold of Harolds of Las Vegas. He called me and wanted to rent a shanty for a week. When they arrived his wife had a fur coat on that I bet was worth $20,000 and he was all rigged up in an Eskimo outfit. When we got out on the ice, we couldn’t put all his food and liquor in their shanty so he rented another one. They had a ball. They just came and stayed a week.”
In the early 1940s Bill Underhill shipped an average of 2,200 smelt a day. He sold them for two cents apiece. He said that the smelt went out all over the country. He usually couldn’t get enough to fill his orders.
Smeltania was fun for a lot of people. Bill Smith was a colorful figure in Boyne’s historical past. One might casually say that his job was to check the depth of the ice and oversee the moving of shanties, make sure everyone was okay including those fishing without a shanty, inspect the telephone lines, keep the phones in working order and supervise the preparations for establishing a new city on the ice every year.
Every year, Mayor Smith had to run for re-election in a fun-loving rivalry against Bill Schaller. Naturally, Guy Baker, owner of the Boyne Citizen, used every chance he got to cast a barb at “Wild Bill” Schaller. After adding up the votes, Bill Smith always emerged victorious.
Around 1943 the smelt dipping and fishing practically died out. There was a resurgence of smelt for a few years in the 1950s and then they disappeared almost completely from the Boyne City area. We know that there was a severe shortage of minnows in Lake Charlevoix and literally miles of dead smelt littered the beaches of northern Michigan. Bill Underhill said that “we sent samples (of smelt) to biologists at Purdue University, University of Michigan, Michigan State University and another college in Ohio. We received four different answers, but they were all alike in one respect — that a fish with an injured gill cannot live. In the samples we picked up and sent, the gills had all turned white. Normal gills on smelt are bright red. The smelt we sent were emaciated, very thin and had nothing in their stomachs. Whether they had a virus that affected the gills or starved, I don’t know.”
In 1981, the smelt were again being caught in Lake Charlevoix. Smeltania was revived and Bill Underhill was elected mayor. We know that Bill had lots of experience as a fisherman, and businessman renting shanties. Under Mayor Smith’s regime he was the Chief of Police for Smeltania. Under Bill’s management, Smeltania became a city on ice again for several years.
In 1983, the Winterfest was scheduled, but there was no ice until Bill supposedly did his famous naked ice dance. Did he really do it? Well, I guess only the late Bill Underhill knows. His exploits were reported around the world. Bill said, “I talked live on radio programs from Rochester, New York; Peoria, Illinois; San Diego and Los Angeles. I talked live on National Broadcasting Company, Mutual Broadcasting System and the Canadian Broadcasting System. I have received many calls and everyone asked if I really did do it. You better believe I did it. Anyway, we received a million dollars worth of publicity with this crazy thing.” Boyne did have ice and everyone had a great time.
Soon the smelt disappeared, but for those who caught and sold smelt their memories linger on about the good times and community spirit the people of Boyne experienced during the difficult years of the depression and World War II. For those who weren’t around during this time, please stop this winter and take a good look at Lake Charlevoix and try to envision Smeltania, that City on Ice. Personally, I want to thank Bill Underhill for spending so much time informing me about Smeltania and contributing so much to the history of Boyne City.
