This article originally appeared in a 2003 edition of the Wisconsin Maple News
What’s in a name? The naming of a place is an important ways to differentiate between areas and tell one another in as few words as possible a great deal of information such as what a place looks like, where it is located, and who lives there. There is also nostalgia to place names, telling of people’s use of the landscape in the past. Maple sugaring is one such activity that has not escaped the attention of place-namers and mapmakers. Within the states where maple syrup and sugar are or were made, the naming of places after maple sugaring appear most common in Wisconsin and Minnesota.
In Wisconsin, place names containing the words maple or sugar are found across the landscape. With our tradition of naming high points and low spots, we have landforms such as Maple Hill in Sauk County and Maple Bluff in Dane County; and Maple Dale in Vernon and Sugar Grove Valley in Sauk County. The name Sugarloaf is found on high places in La Crosse, Green Lake, and Jackson Counties, and Maple Ridge is a popular name in the southwestern counties of Crawford, Pepin, Richland and Vernon. Sugar Camp Hill in Douglas County is named for a prominent stand of maples tapped in the past, while Sugarbush Hill near Crandon continues to be tapped by members of the Forest County Potawatomi Indian Band.
Townships and villages with names like Maple Grove, Sugar Island, Maplewood, Maple Heights, and Maple Plain are scattered across the state. Too numerous to name are the roads and lanes containing the title maple or sugar. Every community has a few, and a few more are added every year. Less known, but locally very significant are off the beaten path places, such as the Sugarbush Bar located east of Park Falls in Eisenstein Township, named for the nearby location of a former Ojibwe sugaring site.
Rivers and streams such as Maple Creek, Sugar Creek and Sugar River often refer to maple sugaring that took place on their banks in the past. Sugar Camp Creek in Oneida County and the Sugarbush Creeks in Vilas and Ashland County connect to many of the Sugarbush Lakes. Maple Lake, Sugar Maple Lake and Sugar Lake are found in the northern counties of Vilas, Oneida and Rusk, but it is the lakes with the names Sugar Camp or Sugarbush that tell us the most about the history of maple sugaring on the landscape. Be they the Upper, Middle, or Lower lakes of the Sugarbush chain on the Lac du Flambeau reservation, or the Sugarbush Lakes in Bayfield, Washburn, Polk, and Ashland Counties; their names reflect the importance of the maple history in those places and the historic connection many Native Americans have to the lands of northern Wisconsin. To this day, Ojibwe Indians tap the maple trees around Sugarbush Lake on the Bad River reservation in Ashland County and Upper, Middle and Lowe Sugarbush Lakes on the Lac du Flambeau reservation, just as previous generations have every spring.
When the place name mentions the camp or bush, we can be confident that the origins and meaning behind a that place name really refers to the making of maple sugar and is not only a reference to the species of trees in the area. For example, the village and Township named Sugar Camp in Oneida County received their name from the former Ojibwe village in this area. Early townsfolk from Rhinelander were known to travel to the Indian settlement to purchase maple sugar made nearby by the Ojibwe residents. As a result, the name Sugar Camp stuck. At the turn of the century, newly arrived white residents established a town site named Robbins in the same location, but the long held traditional name of Sugar Camp hung on, even though by the 1930s all of the Ojibwe residents had moved to the reservation at Lac du Flambeau.
Sometimes, the place names come from the words for maple sugaring in Native American languages. Such is the case in Minnesota with the community of Chanhassen, a suburb of the Twin Cities. Chanhassen comes from the Sioux Indian word of “canhasanpaha”, meaning hard maple hill. The Ojibwe Indian word for maple sugar “ziinsibaakwad” a name found on two lakes in Minnesota on the Leech Lake Indian Reservation.
While the state’s Indian population has played a prominent role in the naming of sugaring locations in Wisconsin, not all maple related place names are named for Native American maple sugaring activity. In particular, the village of Sugar Bush in Brown County was named for the maple sugaring activities of local Belgian settlers.
Not surprisingly, the places with names that are clearly identified as former (and in some cases current) maple sugaring locations are most commonly in the northern half of the state. Likewise, most of these places are within or very near to the state’s present Native American communities, attesting to their continuous use of the same sugarbushes and long-standing tradition as practitioners and originators of the art of maple sugaring. Perhaps, in the future many of the sugarbushes of today’s non-Indian maple producers will be remembered by their own place names on the landscape?
This article originally appeared in a 2005 edition of the Wisconsin Maple News.
The 1940s and 1950s were a time of invention and innovation in the maple industry. One of the innovations brought to the industry by Wisconsin was the Central Evaporator Plant. Initiated by Wisconsin’s own Maple King, Adin Reynolds, the Central Evaporator Plant operated like a cheese factory in which maple sap, like milk, was transported from a variety of sap producers to a large processing facility where sap was combined and converted into maple syrup. As with the cheese factory where milk producers were paid based on the butterfat content of their milk, sap producers were paid based on the sugar content of their sap.
The Reynolds family had always been maple producers, making syrup and sugar from maple trees in their own sugarbush. But in 1946, Adin Reynolds decided to greatly expand his production and he had a novel idea how to do it. He began in 1947 by building a new sugarhouse next to his house, not far from State Highway 45. He then solicited farmers near his Antigo home to tap their maple woods for sap and deliver it to his sugarhouse, where they were paid based on the percentage of sugar per gallon of sap.
According to his son, Juan Reynolds, Adin had no problem convincing area farmers to sell their sap. Located near the intersection of Langlade, Shawano and Marathon Counties, the countryside around the Aniwa plant is marked with dairy farms interspersed between stands of second growth sugar maples. Moreover, the months of March and April were the slow and muddy seasons for most farm families. Farmers had the two most important components for sap production – trees and available labor to tap and gather.
Reynolds’ Aniwa operation quickly grew, expanding from two to three evaporators in 1949 to four evaporators in 1962 making syrup from 75,000 taps. Other maple producers followed Reynolds’ lead, and with his advice and equipment sales set up their own Central Evaporator Plants in the area. Notable among these were plants run by George Klement in Polar and Sidney Maas in Tilleda. Reynolds later purchased the Polar and Tilleda plants, along with another Central Evaporator Plant in Kingsley, Michigan. At their peak in the mid-1960s, the Reynolds Sugarbush was making 30 to 40,000 gallons of syrup a year from at least 160,000 taps on 14 evaporators in these four Central Evaporator Plants.
Another Central Evaporator Plant went into operation in 1962 in Price County near the village of Ogema. Ray Norlin and his brother-in-law Louis Motley expanded their small operation to 2800 taps and began to buy sap from 7,000 more taps making as much as 3000 gallons of syrup a year. A portion of this syrup was sold in bottles and cans under the label Sunny Hills Maple Syrup; however, the bulk of it was sold wholesale in barrels to Reynolds Sugarbush.
Image of Ray Norlin’s Central Evaporator Plant near Ogema, Wisconsin in the mid – 1960s.
Although he was the most successful Central Evaporation Plant operator, Adin Reynolds was not necessarily the first maple producer to buy large volumes of sap in the late 1940s and early 1950s. To the west in Central Minnesota, the Holbert Brothers also instigated a sap buying program in 2947 for their Mille Lacs Maple Products Company. Although the sap buying and syrup making portion of his business was short lived, ending in 1950, Sherman Holbert’s operation was very large for the time, processing sap on two large evaporators from as many as 20,000 taps in the Mille Lacs Lake region. Holbert also developed a Midwestern market by buying large volumes of bulk syrup to be sold to General Foods for the Log Cabin brand of blended syrup. Holbert left the maple business entirely by 1953, opening the door for the Reynolds Sugarbush to assume the large General Foods bulk syrup contracts.
Over the course of the 1950s word of the Central Evaporator Plant and its successes in Wisconsin spread among maple producers in the northeast and New England states. In the traditionally larger maple producing states like Vermont, New York, and Pennsylvania, sap buying was generally unheard of at the time, especially on the scale being carried out in Wisconsin. But by the 1960s, , the Central Evaporator Plant, along with plastic tubing and the invention of the antibacterial paraformaldehyde tap hole pellet, was one of the hot topics of discussion among industry leaders. In fact, C.O. Willits, the maple syrup industry’s leading researcher wrote that “the current trend toward central evaporator plants has marked a new era in the maple industry”.
The growth of the Reynolds Sugarbush empire and the purchase of additional Central Evaporator Plants in 1960, 1963, and 1965 was in large part a result of the contract Reynolds secured with General Foods Corporation in 1959 to supply thousands of gallons of syrup for the making of Log Cabin brand table syrup. In order to meet General Foods demand, Reynolds Sugarbush produced tens of thousands of gallons of syrup and purchased many times more gallons of bulk syrup from Wisconsin producers and across the maple producing regions of the United States and Canada.
Through the 1950s and 1960s, the popularity of the Central Evaporator Plants, along with Reynolds Sugarbush’s promotional efforts and syrup buying program led to a significant increase in the production of maple syrup in Wisconsin. Production grew so much that, by 1970, Wisconsin moved into position as the third greatest syrup producing state behind Vermont and New York. It comes as no surprise that the idea for the Central Evaporator Plant was born in Wisconsin. As the most prominent dairy state in the country, most of Wisconsin’s rural residents in the 1950s and 1960s were familiar with the organization of the dairy industry and cheese factories and took to the concept readily. Likewise, many sap producers were dairy farmers and had both the equipment and technical knowledge needed for moving large volumes of perishable sap.
Reynolds later closed the Polar plant and sold the Kingsley, Michigan and Tilleda plants back their owners in the early 1970s. Sidney Maas continued to operate the Tilleda sugarhouse as a Central Evaporator Plant through the 1980s on sap from 8200 of his own taps and sap purchased from 5000 additional taps. In 1993 Maas sold the sugarhouse to Charlie Wagner who had developed a successful syrup operation near his home in Peshtigo and wanted to expand. Aware of the sap buying history of the operation and the available sap resources in the area, Wagner revised the sap buying program, convincing many of the earlier sap producing families under the Reynolds era to again tap their trees and sell their sap. Today, the Tilleda plant uses reverse osmosis and two large oil fired evaporators to make syrup from as many as 40,000 taps, over 90 percent of which is purchased sap. The Tilleda plant is particularly notable in the history of Wisconsin maple production. With nearly continuous syrup production since Sidney Maas built the sugar house in the 1940s, the Tilleda sugarhouse has the honor of being one of the oldest continually used sugar houses in Wisconsin, it is one of the largest U.S. sugarhouses by volume west of Maine. In addition, it is probably the oldest Central Evaporator Plant still in operation in North America.
Only a handful of sugarhouses that follow the plan of a Central Evaporator Plant operating primarily or entirely on purchased sap, still exist in the U.S. However it is not uncommon for commercial producers to augment their own sap supplies with some sap purchased from neighbors and reliable sap producers, ultimately the result of an idea that began over fifty years ago in Wisconsin.
One of the most interesting ways to study the history of maple sugaring is to watch it in action in vintage films. There are a number of films available to watch online and others available in libraries and archives in the maple sugaring region.
Although the black and white films depicting sugaring activities, both in the sugarbush and in the sugarhouse were generally staged or “directed,” taking away a certain degree of spontaneity and authenticity, they still provide a useful glimpse of the methods, technology, and landscapes in use at the time. Most of these films include scenes of men and boys gathering sap from pails on trees, boiling in kettles in the open air and in evaporators in sugarhouses, as well as finishing and bottling. Many films also illustrate sugar on snow parties and enjoying maple syrup on pancakes.
What follows is a listing and links to a handful of early 20th century maple sugaring films, mostly from the 1920s and the silent film era.
The metadata from the Youtube post claims that this 14 minute silent film from around 1925 titled “Maple Sugar” was from the Library of Congress’ Prelinger Archives; however, I have not been able to find this film in the Prelinger’s online listings, so I cannot confirm that is the source. It appears from this same youtube info that this film was produced by the Mogull Brothers.
The Library and Archives of Canada has made available an 8:14 minute color film from 1941 titled “Maple Sugar Time”.
Library and Archives of Canada maple sugaring film from 1941.
Northeast Historic Film
Another film I am especially familiar with is a black and white silent film shot on silver nitrate stock in the sugarbush, sugarhouse, and factory of George Cary in 1927. The film is archived at Northeast Historic Film in Bucksport, Maine and was donated for stabilization and preservation as part of the Philippe Beaudry Collection. The film is extremely deteriorated in some sections but overall is clear enough with windows of very clean images, to see what was being documented and displayed. This film is not available online in its entirety and there are severe restrictions on its use, but there is a 4:45 minute sample clip of the film on the Northeast Historic Film website and many still photos taken the same day as filming have been published over the years. Copies of the film for public viewing have been donated to the St. Johnsbury Athenaeum, the archives at the Fairbanks Museum and Planetarium in St. Johnsbury, the Vermont Historical Society archives, and the Special Collections at the Bailey Howe Library at the University of Vermont.
Through my ongoing research on George Cary and the Cary Maple Sugar Company, I have found this film and its history especially interesting. As a result I have dug a little deeper into the story of how and where this film was made.
Here are a number of stills from the Cary film followed by an excerpt about the film from my recently completed book on George Cary titled, Maple King: The Rise and Fall of a Maple Syrup Empire, which will be available for purchase in spring 2018.
Excerpt from Chapter Four of Maple King: The Rise and Fall of a Maple Syrup Empire –
Movie Making
Wishing to display both the evolution of sap gathering and maple sugar making as well as the modern process employed by the Cary Maple Sugar Company, George Cary arranged for a silent moving picture to be made in 1927. The film included outdoor scenes from the sugarbush and sugarhouses at Cary’s Highland Farm, along with action shots of processing and packing syrup and sugar in the Cary Company plant in St. Johnsbury. Today, a copy of the film, which was originally shot on 35 mm nitrate stock, has been archived in the Philippe Beaudry Collection at Northeast Historic Film, a repository in Bucksport, Maine.[i]
The silent moving picture, along with an extensive collection of still photographs of the same sugarbush and sugarhouse scenes as featured in the film, were shot over several days by well-known photographers Harry and Alice Richardson of Newport, Vermont. The Richardson’s were widely regarded for their many outdoor and studio photographs of the Northeast Kingdom in Vermont, including a number of colorful novelty postcards. It was announced as early as 1926 that the Richardson’s would be making a moving picture for the Cary Maple Sugar Company.[ii]
Scenes in the sugarbush focused on three romanticized periods in the history of maple sugaring; Native American sugaring, nineteenth century Euro-American/Euro-Canadian sugaring, and early twentieth century Euro-American/Euro-Canadian sugaring. For the telling of the Native American story, Cary hired a full-blooded Penobscot Indian named John Lewey from Old Town, Maine. Mr. Lewey was accompanied by his son Roy Lewey. Posing in the snow in a full-feathered Plains Indian-style headdress, buckskins, and polished leather dress shoes, Lewey is shown tapping a few maple trees, gathering sap with wood pails from wood troughs, and boiling sap in a large iron kettle suspended from a tripod in front of a newly constructed log cabin. Sap was gathered from about one hundred split log wood troughs fed by hand carved flat wood taps.[iii]
The nineteenth century methods of sugaring featured a Yankee farmer played by Albert Leland, himself a sugarmaker from Barton, Vermont. Leland was dressed for the part, complete with wide brimmed straw hat, a thick full-length beard, and high boots. Equipped with a shoulder yoke and two wooden gathering pails, Leland was shown hustling from tree to tree collecting sap from wood collecting pails set on the ground and transporting it to a gathering tank pulled by oxen through the snow.[iv] A young Richard Franklin, son of Earl Franklin, a Cary employee, was shown leading a pair of steers with a goad stick, while in another scene, Mr. Cary himself appears driving a different pair of oxen along a road in the sugarbush.
Twentieth century sugaring was depicted both with the collection of sap in covered galvanized metal pails hung from the trees along with the cutting-edge Brower Sap Piping System. In one scene a man is shown installing the Gooseneck section of the Brower pipeline in a taphole in the tree. Later he is shown connecting sections of the pipeline along their wire supports, while in another he is walking along and checking the metal pipeline for leaks.
There are also numerous scenes of Cary’s Highland Farm sugarhouses in action with steam billowing from the cupola, men feeding the boiling arches and drawing off syrup. Other men are seen moving barrels of syrup, along with gathering and unloading tanks of fresh sap pulled on sleds by teams of Cary’s prized oxen.
Besides the footage of the sap gathering and syrup making process in the sugarbush and sugarhouses, the filmmakers also shot footage inside Cary’s St. Johnsbury plant. Such shots included a worker filling wooden boxes lined with waxed paper on a conveyor line with thick hot maple sugar from an overhead vat as well as a room full of hundreds of such boxes of sugar in a warehouse cooling. In contrast to the dirt and soot of the scenes from the sugarbush and sugarhouses, the shots from the plant interior feature employees clad in all white smocks and hats working with processing and automated packing equipment in a sterile-like white painted and polished interior. Shipping boxes labelled “Highland Pure Maple” are shown being nailed together and one scene a worker displays a can of “Highland Pure Maple Syrup”.
One-part marketing tool and one part educational materials, the film was likely shown in theaters as a short before feature films began. A few years after the shooting of the film, a reporter from the Caledonian Record who had been on hand to document the movie making told of his delight at seeing the film while in a movie house in Seattle, Washington. The reporter was even more shocked to see a few seconds of himself on the film where they had captured close-up images of him drinking fresh sap from a metal collection pail behind a large tree.
Notes
[i] The Cary silent film was donated as 2,600 feet on four reels to Northeast Historic Film in 1997 by Philippe Beaudry of Longueuil, Quebec for safe and secure archiving. The reels included footage of the Vermont flood of 1927 and is archived under the title “Cary Maple Sugar Company –outtakes” in the Philippe Beaudry Collection at Northeast Historic Film. The film has been converted to VHS and DVD masters for safe handling and reproduction. Unfortunately, restrictions on reproducing still images from the film coupled with the often poor quality of the images on the deteriorating film prevent the display many of the various scenes from the film, in particular scenes from the interior of the Cary plant and activity at the Stanton (now Jones) and Waterman (now Newell) sugarhouses (see Chapter Five). However, many of the still photographs made by the Richardson’s at the time of filming the moving picture display the same scenes in better quality. Copies of the film in DVD format are maintained at the Vermont Historical Society, UVM Bailey Howe Library, the Fairbanks Museum and Planetarium Archives and the St. Johnsbury Athenaeum for educational purposes.
[ii] Florence A. Kendall, “Moving Pictures of Maple Sugar Making,” The Vermonter, Vol. 31, No. 9 (1926).
[iii] Lois Goodwin Greer, “America’s Maple Sugar King: George C. Cary,” The Vermonter Vol. 34, No. 1: 3-8 (1929); “Real Romance in VT. Maple Sugar Making : Three Epochs in Its Development Shown in Cary Camps” Unknown Newspaper, April 7, 1927. News clipping found in photocopy version of Cary Family Album in the George C. Cary Papers, Fairbanks Museum Archives (St. Johnsbury, VT).
[iv] “Real Romance in VT. Maple Sugar Making: Three Epochs in Its Development Shown in Cary Camps” Unknown Newspaper, April 7, 1927. News clipping found in photocopy version of Cary Family Album in the George C. Cary Papers, Fairbanks Museum Archives (St. Johnsbury, VT).
In searching for detailed descriptions of maple sugaring methods and equipment from specific periods of time in our past, one of the most interesting publications comes from a piece by C.T. Alvord titled The Manufacture of Maple Sugar. Alvord’s report appeared in the first Report of the Commissioner of Agriculture for 1862 which was published in 1863 by the Government Printing Office in Washington, D.C. This was the first official agricultural related report of the newly formed United States Department of Agriculture, which was organized by law in 1862.
C.T. Alvord was Calvin Thales Alvord (1821-1894) a lawyer, progressive farmer, and sugarmaker who lived his whole life in Wilmington, Vermont. Alvord was a regular contributor to the farming and agricultural journals of his time such as the Country Gentleman, American Cultivator and Rural New Yorker, providing insights and opinions on everything from growing grass seed, to raising lambs and prized short horns, and of course maple sugaring. In fact much of what he wrote for the Report of the Commissioner of Agriculture for 1862 was previously published by him in volume 15, number 19 of the Country Gentleman in 1860 under the title “Sugar Making in the Olden Time.”
What is especially interesting about Alvord’s 1863 report is that he starts off with a description of what a typical sugaring operation was like about 25 years earlier, circa 1835, before bringing the reader up to date on what was the state of the art around 1860. Alvord’s description of sugaring in the early 1800s emphasized the use of multiple iron kettles for long nights of boiling, V-cuts and U-shaped wooden slat taps transitioning to tubular wooden spiles in drilled holes, and rough split log collection troughs transitioning to wooden pails on the ground or hung on spikes. The sugaring camp featured crude shacks in the woods for storage and shelter for the people when boiling but not for actually protecting the kettles or sap. Of course the product of those times was exclusively maple sugar.
Related to that, Alvord’s report is useful in showing how much maple syrup, or maple molasses as they sometimes called it, was being made by the early 1860s. It shows that the shift away from sugar production was well underway prior to the Civil War. In fact Alvord notes “…many farmers are now making ‘maple sirup’ to sell, instead of maple sugar. At present prices it is thought to be more profitable to make sirup than sugar.” It is interesting that he put the words “maple sirup” in quotation marks, when using that word choice instead of molasses as if it was a new word for the sugarmaker’s vocabulary. Alvord goes on to say that in recent years the maple sugarmakers in his area of Vermont have “to some extent” been making maple syrup instead of maple sugar and putting it up in wooden kegs and metal cans holding from one to four gallons.
Alvord’s 1860s description is important in that it shows how early much of the technology of the late 19th century was in use. With the exception of the flat pans on brick arches being replaced by evaporators with baffles and drop or raised flues as well as the shift to cast iron spiles and sheet metal collection pails, very little improvement was seen in the technology for the next 40 or so years. Even the sugarhouse described by Alvord was little changed in layout and form by the turn of the century.
Alvord even describes a kind of pipeline of grooved wooden slats laid end to end to direct sap from a gathering point higher in the sugarbush down to the sugarhouse. Recognizing the drawbacks of the open wooden pipeline for debris and snow and rain to affect the sap, Alvord notes that there were even examples of tubular tin “leading spouts” as he called them which was a “great improvement on the wooden spout. It can be used as well in stormy as in pleasant weather. It is made in the form of a tube or a pipe, in lengths of eight feet. The size of the tube generally made is one-half inch, and costs thirty-seven cents per rod; one end of these spouts is made a little larger than the other, so that the ends will fit tight in putting them up.” This description of a metal pipeline notably predates the invention and use of the better known Brower Gooseneck metal pipeline by a good 50 years.
A PDF of the entire report can be viewed and downloaded from the link above with the Alvord chapter found on pages 394 to 405.
In August 2017 an important and interesting new book by the titleMeanings of Maple: An Ethnography of Sugaring was released for purchase by the University of Arkansas Press. Written by Professor Michael A. Lange of Burlington, Vermont’s Champlain College, this book takes a sweeping look at the many ways maple is made meaningful in people’s lives. When using the term maple, the author is referring to the broader world of maple sugaring or all things that go into and come out of the making of maple syrup in a modern context.
As an anthropologist, Lange’s ethnographic approach is based on many years of speaking with, observing, and interacting with a broad cross section of the maple producing world. His research and analysis is written from the perspective of Vermont as the center of the maple universe, some might say for obvious reasons, and the book is as much an exploration of how maple has meaning or is made meaningful to Vermont and Vermonters as it is about the meanings of maple in general.
This is an incredibly thoughtful book, in the truest sense of the word. This book is full of thought and ideas and shows that Lange has taken the time to really think about how and what makes maple meaningful to people both in and out of the maple producing environment. It is a book that will force any reader to think a little deeper and a little differently about some aspect of maple than they probably had in the past. It is one of those gems that forces one to admit that they hadn’t really thought about something that way before and to be glad that you were brought to see the maple world a little differently.
It is not a details book that is heavy with facts and figures or case studies and, at times, is somewhat lacking in a broader geographic and historical context especially regarding the modern role of Quebec in consideration of some of the categories of meaning. But that really doesn’t matter and frankly it would be great to see someone tackle a similar project from the point of view and grounding of the Quebecois traditions and meanings. This is not to say that the book is lacking in accuracy, far from it, rather it is to emphasize and applaud that its focus is more philosophical and its strength is in its narrative.
I strongly encourage anyone with an interest in the maple world, regardless of the connection to Vermont, but especially if they are connected to Vermont to pick up this book. It is not a book that you will necessarily “learn” something new from but it is a book that will even strengthen maple’s meaning that much more and help you better appreciate and understand what you think you already knew.
The book can be purchased from the University of Arkansas Press in paperback for $27.95 or hardbound for $69.95.
One interesting and important way to understand and tell the story of the history of maple sugaring is through the remains of past sugaring operations. Recording and investigating these sites and artifacts from maple sugaring’s past falls into the realm of what I like to call sugarbush archaeology.
For many folks when the idea of archaeology is brought up they immediately think of studying past human behavior before the time of written records, and that certainly covers a lot of the focus of archaeology. However, archaeology is not solely limited to the pre-writing segment of human history and also includes consideration of our material remains from more recent periods in time.
Just about everyone that has spent any time in or around a sugarbush which has been in use for a few generations or more is probably aware of the location of an old sugarhouse or boiling camp. If it is fairly recently retired or abandoned, it may be a standing ruin or relic, but if it was left many more years ago, chances are it has been reduced to a simple scatter of twisted metal, an irregular foundation or collections of stones, or a mounded patch of ground in the woods. Those remains are now artifacts and features of an archaeological site. The heritage of sugarmakers is certainly preserved in things like the photographs and collections of antiques and ephemera that line the wall of many sugar houses. But there are other artifacts, sometimes very big artifacts, of maple sugaring that we can also preserve and learn from.
While there are some written records describing early maple sugaring activities, the further one goes back in time, the fewer and fewer records there are and what is written is generally lacking in detail or description. For example, in the western Great Lakes region in earlier times when Euro-Americans were still settling the land and access to use of the woods was more open and with fewer limits, it was not uncommon to set up a sugarbush and boiling camp where ever it was deemed best. This may have been private land, it may have been unclaimed public land, it may have been tribal land or even tax forfeiture land.
Photo of nested kettles in abandoned Native American sugaring camp.
Today, archaeologists find a variety of sites in the forest that mark the past location of all sorts and scales of maple sugaring, from the simplest boiling camp that may have been a single kettle used for one season to the former location of a sugarhouse that contained multiple evaporator where thousands of gallons of syrup were made each season.
Most of the work being done that identifies maple sugaring archaeological sites happens on federal, tribal, state, and county lands where there are rules in place directing land managers to look for archaeological and historic sites like these and take those places into account when managing those lands. But maple sugaring sites are all over, and there are undoubtedly many many times more sites on private lands and in current sugarbushes that any of these public lands.
Photo of the unloading ramp and sugarhouse at the Grand Island sugarbush shortly after abandonment.
I’ve worked for many years as a field archaeologist in the woods of northern Wisconsin, Michigan and Minnesota and have recorded dozens and dozens of maple sugaring sites. Most of these sites were the remains of small short lived boiling camps with simple stone and earthen arches and an associated scatter of metal artifacts. But every now and then there was an opportunity to work with a more substantial site. For example one interesting site was the remains of the Cleveland Cliffs Mining Company’s sugarbush on land now managed by the Hiawatha National Forest on Grand Island in Lake Superior off the shore of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.
Photograph of the remains of the sugar house on Grand Island from east side of site looking west.Map of archaeological remains of Grand Island sugaring camp.
The company operated a commercial sugaring operation for xx years before they closed shop and abandoned everything in place in 19xx. Unlike a lot of sugarhouses, when they closed they just walked away and essentially left the evaporators and equipment behind. I was able to photograph and map what was left of the decaying sugar house which was presented in a 2003 article in the Michigan Academician.
Other researchers have also looked at maple history from the lens of the archaeological record, with two notable publications being Keener, Gordon and Nye’s 2010 article on the Petticrew-Taylor Farmstead in Ohio and David Babson’s 2011 doctoral dissertation on late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century sugaring sites in Lewis County, New York.
While the study of abandoned commercial sugaring sites is fascinating, a great deal of my attention has been spent working on identifying and understanding the remains of sugaring activities associated with Ojibwe and Potowatomi Native American communities from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Most people who are less familiar with those Indian communities, including sugarmakers from New England, are often a surprised to learn that maple sugaring continues to be an important part of the seasonal activities of Indian people into the twentieth century. This is in part a legacy of the Indian maple production being a subsistence activity for family and community consumption and largely operating outside of the mainstream realities the mainstream market economy. It is also a relic of a government assimilation policy that discouraged Indian people from continuing their traditional gathering activities, often forcing Indian people to quietly carry out their sugaring.
Map of remains of Native American boiling arch at McCord Indian Village in northern Wisconsin.
While working as an archaeologist for the Lac du Flambeau Ojibwe Band in northern Wisconsin we recorded dozens of abandoned sugaring camps both on and off the reservation. A great deal of this research was published in an article in 2001 in the Wisconsin Archeologist which presented an overview of the kinds of sites we were finding and the material remain left behind like metal cans, pails, birch bark containers, and metal and wood taps for sap collection as well as kettles, chains, and hooks for boiling sap.
Map of remains of storage structure and associated artifact scatter at Lac du Flambeau sugar camp LDF-081.
Learning as much as we could at the sites at Lac du Flambeau was a springboard to being asked to help record and interpret many more Native American sugaring sites in northern Wisconsin and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Much of that work was presented in a 2005 article in the Midcontinental Journal of Archaeology about the remains of tell-tale U-shaped boiling arches at known and suspected Native American communities. Both of these articles were largely aimed at helping the practitioners of professional field archaeology better recognize and appreciate this often overlook and misunderstood cultural resource.
Our limited understanding of the history of Indian sugaring has been an important reasons and motivation for me to focus on recording and interpreting these sites. There are many of non-Indian archaeological remains of sugaring to investigate as well; however, the supporting documentation and historical information related to those sites is a bit more robust. Also because many of the Euro-American sugaring sites were established on lands that continue to be held in private ownership, often as sugarbushes to this day, they may be in a better position to be preserved and protected.
When talking about the early years of maple sugaring in North American, curious and knowledgeable people invariably bring up the question of who made maple sugar first, Native peoples or the Euro-Americans and Euro-Canadians that came to the new world. That’s a very interesting question and one that archaeology should be able to help answer. Wading into the origins debate, as I refer to it, is a curious topic and not unlike opening up a political can of worms. People are very sure of what they have come to believe is the truth, regardless of what evidence they are presented. However, I will save my thoughts on that topic for the moment and dedicate another post to tackling that in the future.
What is important to consider and appreciate in looking at and managing a stand of maple trees, be it a current or past sugarbush and on private or public lands is that the the land has a story to tell. Often times this story is not recorded any where else and may no longer even remain in the minds and memories of those that worked those woods. What looks like trash or ruins does have meaning if you look at it from a certain light. Likewise the old roads, fence lines, scarred trees, and signs of different cutting histories and forest management are part of the unwritten record of sugarbush archaeology. Where we can we should take the time to consider, document, learn from and maybe even preserve what remains of the past years of sugaring.
REFERENCES CITED
Babson, David W., “Sweet Spring: The Development and Meaning of Maple Syrup Production at Fort Drum, New York.” (doctoral dissertation, Syracuse University, 2011).
Keener, Craig S, Stephen C Gordon, and Kevin Nye, “Uncovering a Mid-Nineteenth Century Maple Sugar Camp and Stone Furnace at the Petticrew-Taylor Farmstead in Southwest Ohio.” Midcontinental Journal of Archaeology 35, no. 2 (2010) 133-166.
Thomas, Matthew M., “The Archaeology of Great Lakes Native American Maple Sugar Production in the Reservation Era.” The Wisconsin Archeologist 82, no. 1 (2001) 75-102.
Thomas, Matthew M. and Janet Silbernagel, “The Evolution of a Maple Sugaring Landscape on Lake Superior’s Grand Island.” The Michigan Academician 35, no. 2 (2003) 135-158.
Thomas, Matthew M., “Historic American Indian Maple Sugar and Syrup Production Boiling Arches in Michigan and Wisconsin.” Midcontinental Journal of Archaeology 30, no. 2(2005) 299-326.
The Conference on Maple Products began in 1950 under the guidance of Dr. Charles O. Willits and with the support of the United States Department of Agriculture’s Eastern Regional Research Laboratory. At this time the maple industry was coming out of a bit of a post-war slump and there were no national or international maple syrup organizations or annual meetings. Some individual states and provinces had organized maple associations with annual meetings that occasionally brought researchers, producers, and industry representatives together but the industry as a whole was largely unorganized.
The Eastern Regional Research Laboratory opened in 1939 in Wyndmoor, Pennsylvania, a suburb or Philadelphia. With a newly completed doctorate in analytical chemistry, Charles O. Willits was one of the first researchers to come on board at the laboratory. Being concerned with the decline of the maple industry at that time, Willits and a collection of his colleagues at the lab proposed a long-term program of research to examine and improve the production and utilization of maple products. Willits also recognized the equal importance of making their research results known and applicable to the maple industry.
The Conference on Maple Products was envisioned as a place to present and report on current research of the laboratory as well as the work of other government and academic research units and industry representatives in a face-to-face manner with stakeholders and leaders of the maple industry and encourage dialogue and discussion. Held every three years, there were eight gatherings in total, with the first seven in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania near the Eastern Regional Research Laboratory and the last meeting in Boyne Falls, Michigan in conjunction with the National Maple Syrup Council.
C.O. Willits retired from the Eastern Laboratory in 1969 and with him, the maple products research program at the Eastern laboratory gradually wound down. Without their leader and with the newer National Maple Syrup Council (to later become the North American Maple Syrup Council) supporting research, regular conferences, and face to face meetings; the tri-annual Conference on Maple Products held its land meeting in 1971.
Fortunately, the proceedings for all eight meetings are well preserved and can be viewed as PDF documents online. These proceedings contain an interesting collection of reports presented at the meetings and in some cases the transcripts of the discussions that followed. Presentations were from across the maple industry, including updates from the packing industry, policy makers, new technology, historical summaries, and new and developing research. You can find these conference proceedings at the following links on www.archive.org.
Prior to the modern method of collecting maple sap with flexible tubing there was an earlier attempt to put plastic to use as sap collection bags. The first reusable plastic sap collection bag was invented by Everett I. Soule of the George H. Soule Company the well-known maple equipment manufacturers out of St. Albans, Vermont. Following the Soule Company’s primary brand name for their King evaporator, when the bag came on the market it was sold as the King Sap Bag.
Clip from a 1956 advertisement for the Soule Company King Sap Bags.
Everett Soule began developing and experimenting with his bag idea in the mid-1940s and by October 1950 had perfected a design for a 13 to 15-quart bag that was then distributed to Soule Company equipment dealers around the country for sale and first-time use in the 1951 sugaring season.
The King bag was made of a transparent, heavy plastic called vinylite that was said to be the same material used by the Air Force for the packaging of food and water drops to soldiers. The bags were simple to use and did have the advantage of being cheaper than new pails and covers and when flattened for storage took up considerably less room than an equal number of pails. The top had an open flap that allowed one to pivot the bag on the spile to empty the collected sap without taking the bag off the tree, at least in theory.
Examples of the uniquely shaped clear plastic King Sap Bags hanging from maple trees very full of sap.
The transparent plastic allowed one to easily see the sap volume in the bag and did allow sun through to provide some ultraviolet light that arguably led to reduced microbial development and clearer, cleaner sap. Use of the bags required one to employ a hookless spile, such as the Soule hookless spout. When first introduced in 1950-51, prices for the bags were for anywhere from 69 to 89 cents each for lots of 100 or more with 100 Soule spouts also available for $8.00. Although these were said to be made of a durable plastic that could withstand the extreme weather conditions of the tapping season and the significant temperature fluctuations, it was still early in the use of plastics. The late Bob Coombs informed me that the cost of the King Sap bag was actually more like $1.25 a bag and they tended to get brittle and crack and split after a season.
Everett I. Soule’s 1960 design drawing for Canadian patent 598853.
Everett I. Soule obtained a patent in Canada for his sap bag (CA 598853) in May of 1960, but it does not appear that a US patent was ever secured, despite marketing language of patent pending. At the time of his invention, Everett I. Soule was the president of the George H. Soule Company, having taken over as president in 1938 following the death of his uncle and company founder, George H. Soule in 1937. Along with his brother Raymond L. Soule, Everett continued run the family owned company and himself became a prominent individual in the maple industry for many years. Following his death in 1964 the Soule Company was sold to Leader Evaporator Company, including the manufacturing and sale of the King Sap Bag. Under Leader’s ownership the printing on the exterior of the bag was changed from George H. Soule Co. to Leader Evaporator Co., Inc.
Initially, the maple industry showed great enthusiasm for this radical invention and introduction of plastics, then a post-war technological wonder that was sweeping the world. In an industry that previously was limited to wood and metal, plastics showed great promise, but it was the arrival of flexible tubing at the end of the 1950s that a meaningful shift in technology was to come. The King Sap Bag continued in production into the late 1960s, but by the 1970s it was essentially abandoned.
Image of Reynolds Sap Sak in use. Photo credit: www.mapletapper.com
However, another variation of the plastic sap collection bag came along a few years later and has had a more lasting impact, especially among backyard sugarmakers and hobbyist. Unlike the reusable King Sap Bag that was washed, dried and stored at the end of the season, this bag was a single season disposable model that hung on a metal frame. Invented by Adin Reynolds of the Reynolds Sugarbush in Aniwa, Wisconsin in 1958 the Reynolds Sap Sak first became available for commercial sale in 1966.
Design drawing from Adin Reynolds’ 1967 United States patent 3,304,654.
The Reynold Sap Sak was distinctive with its bright blue bags, although it is possible to use a clear plastic bag as well. Unlike the King Sap Bag, the Reynolds bags were simple, thin and very inexpensive plastic bags that were designed to be thrown away at the end of each season. The thinner bags were a little more prone to splitting when the sap froze on cold nights and squirrels were known to gnaw through a few corners, but the extremely low cost of bags made the occasional installation of replacement bags acceptable. Like the King Sap Bag, the Reynolds Sap Sak also worked best with a hookless spile, since the metal cover was designed for fit over the spile and have its weight supported directly by the spile.
Front cover of 1967 equipment supply catalog from Reynolds Sugar Bush prominently presenting the Reynolds Sap Sak.
The Reynolds Sugar Bush initially promoted their bag through their Wisconsin equipment dealership and in 1967 Adin Reynolds was awarded a patent for this invention. In time, with its popularity and demand it began to be carried and supplied by nearly all maple equipment dealers. The Reynolds Sap Sak is still sold and in use across the U.S. and Canada but probably sees greatest use in the upper Midwest where it was first introduced. It is also possible that for the smaller scale producers not choosing to use tubing there is less of a concern for appearance or a romanticism about the aesthetics of sugaring in Wisconsin or Minnesota or Michigan that one might find in New England and a blue plastic bag is a perfectly acceptable way to gather sap.
References
“Everett I. Soule,” The Burlington Free Press (Burlington , VT) August 17, 1964, 9
“Everett I. Soule Takes New Post,” The Burlington Free Press (Burlington, VT) January 4, 1938, 6.
“George H. Soule, Leader in Maple Industry, Is Dead,” The Burlington Free Press (Burlington, VT) May 10, 1937, 2.
“J. Elmer Lepley Sells Plastic Maple Sap Bag,” The Republic (Meyersdale, PA) October 26, 1950, 2.
R.C. Soule, “What is New in Maple Sirup Equipment”, Report of Proceedings of the Conference on Maple Products (Philadelphia, PA, 1950) 28-29.
Lynn H. Reynolds, Reynolds, Maple and History: Fit for Kings, (Reynolds Family Trust: Hortonville, WI) 1998.
“Sap Bag is New Wrinkle in Maple Sugar Industry,” Battle Creek Enquirer (Battle Creek, MI) April 16, 1951, 14.
An outstanding new publication recognizes the Bellechasse region of Quebec as home to a strong community of maple producers and for its important contributions to the technological developments of the modern maple industry. This book was released in 2016 and is written entirely in french with the title L’histoire de l’acériculture et des sucriers de Bellechasse: Berceau Technologique Mondial Acéricole, 1716-2016. This title translates in english to The history of the maple industry and maple producers of Bellechasse: The Technological Cradle of the Maple World, 1716-2016.
Réjean Bilodeau, the author and sugarmaker from Saint-Damien, Quebec, undertook the book as a project to occupy his time in his retirement years. However, with one book down Réjean is only getting started. The cover of this book indicates it is Tome 1, or volume 1. Réjean has told me he is working on volume 2 at the moment which, at another whopping 600 pages, he expects to have finished and for sale in 2018.
The book is divided into six chapters and covers over 300 years of maple history in the Bellechasse region with a special focus on the people who made this history come alive, be they producers or inventors or equipment manufacturers. More recent history focuses on the contributions of IPL and CDL and the Métiver and Chabot families, the role of Cyrille Vaillancourt and the creation of La Coop Citadelle among many other topics and dozens of producers and sugarbushes.
At 740 pages with 400 illustrations and weighing in at over six pounds this book is no light read. In fact, it is incredibly dense with detailed research, interviews and first-hand accounts and memories from sugarmakers in the Bellechasse region. One thousand copies of this self-published book were produced and many have already sold.
Réjean Bilodeau proudly displays a copy of his fantastic new book.
As noted above, the book is completely written in French, although with the wonders of today’s modern technology such as Google Translate and other similar apps for smart phones it is now possible to use the camera on a mobile phone to take a snapshot/scan of a page and translate the text on the page in mere seconds. The quality and accuracy of such translations is sufficient to understand the text, but it is true that at times the translations lose the nuanced meanings of certain phrases, idioms, and clichés.
I purchased my copy of the book through the Canadian maple equipment dealer CDL for $50 US plus $29.91 for shipping. Try contacting CDL in Quebec to place an order by email or phone at 418-883-5158 ext. 337.
Those interested in contacting Mr. Bilodeau directly who speak or write in French can reach him by email or by telephone at 418-789-3664.
A current project I am researching involves an examination of the history of the early years of the use of flexible plastic tubing for the gathering and movement of maple sap. This research looks at the evolution of earlier pipeline systems leading up to the first experiments and prototype taps, tubing and fittings before diving into the more specific events leading up to the patents and introduction of marketable products of the 1950s and early 1960s. A focus of the research and story is the role and interaction of the three primary inventors and promoters of early tubing – George Breen, Nelson Griggs, and Bob Lamb.
From a historical point of view, as something that primarily take place in the 1950s, the origins and evolution of plastic tubing is a fairly recent story to tell; however, enough time has passed that none of the key individuals are still living. Despite that fact, as this research has progressed I have been lucky enough to interview various family members of all three of these men, as well as other knowledgeable folks in the maple world with their own connections, stories, and information to share. Nevertheless, I am still looking for a little more detail and corroborating information, most notably related to Bob and Florence Lamb’s back story and their initial introduction and engagement with the maple industry and developing their version of plastic tubing, spouts and fittings.
I am sure there are many individuals out there in the maple world that have had their own interactions with these men and women over the years, not to mention their own experiences with early adoption of plastic tubing. If you are one of these folks and would like to share anything that you think might is relevant, informative, or just plain helpful, I’d love to hear from you. Please drop me a note at maplesyruphistory@gmail.com or use the comment form on this website.
