RASMUS HANSON

TIMBER BARON

     Who was Rasmus Hanson, and what did he do besides start the Grayling Fish Hatchery?

     Rasmus Hanson was born in Denmark in 1846 and attended school until the age of 14.  He emigrated to America in 1865.

     To say that Mr. Hanson did well for himself would be an understatement.  Upon his arrival in America he immediately moved to Racine, Wisconson, where he hired out on a farm for four months.  He then went to Manistee, Michigan, where he found a job working on the wharf for $20 per month.  Within two short years he was in business for himself.

     Rasmus was married September 17, 1867, to Miss Margrethe Hanson, with whom he had five children.  He and his wife moved to Grayling in 1876.

     In 1878 the Salling, Hanson & Co. was formed.  This firm began operations at Grayling, putting logs into the Manistee River and selling them to parties at Manistee.  In 1882 the firm commenced to manufacture lumber of its own and bought out a small sawmill.  The firm went on to own pine and hardwood timber covering about 85,000 acres.  Hanson later helped to organize the Michigan Sugar Company and the Bay City Sugar Company, a myriad of other lumber companies, and also held interest in the Crawford County Exchange Bank, the Grayling Box Company, and many other enterprises.

     The name of Portage Lake, near Grayling, was changed to Lake Margrethe when the Hansons donated 15,000 acres of land to the Michigan National Guard for what is now Camp Grayling.

     In 1914, in an attempt to restore the fisheries of the legendary AuSable River, Hanson helped to found the Grayling Fish Hatchery.  Other famous contributors to the initial costs of the Hatchery included Henry and Edsel Ford, as well as Thomas Edison.   Many say that Hanson and the other lumber barons were the root cause of the grayling’s decline, but it was also with Hanson’s  money and the money of men like him that the Hatchery was born.

     Rasmus Hanson died of pneumonia in his home October 31, 1927, at the age of 81.

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