  Fareastsider Member Username: Fareastsider Post Number: 57 Registered: 08-2006 |
I was wondering if anyone knew the locations of garbage dumps within or near the city. I know in Macomb there are probably about 15 old dumps dotting the landscape. I was wondering if anybody knew any in Detroit since you often cant tell they existed. | ||
Tarkus Member Username: Tarkus Post Number: 230 Registered: 04-2006 |
I know there is one at the foot of Lenox where the rehabbed park is. During the reconstruction I went down there and collected lots of old pharmacy bottle along with old beer and soda bottles. One was an old Orange Crush bottle from the 20's that was still capped and full, also lots of old Stroh clear bottles. | ||
Mikeg Member Username: Mikeg Post Number: 504 Registered: 12-2005 |
Here's some information about a dump in the downtown area that was used from 1780 to 1848. | ||
Livernoisyard Member Username: Livernoisyard Post Number: 2290 Registered: 10-2004 |
A good candidate for a dump site be the old brickyards and anywhere near where those methane trap pipes are located throughout the city and inner burbs. | ||
Harsensis Member Username: Harsensis Post Number: 154 Registered: 07-2005 |
I heard that somebody pulled a bunch of Interurban stuff out of the Jefferson Avenue Chrysler site near Conner Creek, I'm not sure exactly where though. | ||
30th_street Member Username: 30th_street Post Number: 49 Registered: 04-2006 |
Speaking of methane traps. Does anyone know if there is a difference between the blue and green ones. I have always been intrigued by these pipes. It would be interesting to learn more about them, like how there location is determined and why sometimes there are a pair of them and sometimes just one. Were they all put in around the same time or are some older then others. I suppose a map of old dump sites would be too controversial for the public to see. | ||
Bulletmagnet Member Username: Bulletmagnet Post Number: 13 Registered: 01-2007 |
Here is one in Grosse Pointe Farmshttp://maps.live.com/default.a spx?v=2&cp=44.023938~-99.71&st yle=h&lvl=4&tilt=-89.875918865 193&dir=0&alt=7689462.6842358& wa=wsignin1.0 I don’t have any information on how long it was in operation, but I will do some research and post any findings. I have worked at this location for a lot of years, and when ever this field gets excavated tons on bottles are dug up. | ||
Bulletmagnet Member Username: Bulletmagnet Post Number: 14 Registered: 01-2007 |
oops! Try this one... http://maps.live.com/default.a spx?v=2&cp=42.41413~-82.90952& style=h&lvl=19&tilt=-90&dir=0& alt=-1000&scene=5630523&cid=EE 5B1704DF5FAFD!101 | ||
Cambrian Member Username: Cambrian Post Number: 565 Registered: 08-2006 |
In 1928 Highland park had a "Hoggery" This was on the grounds of the present day Hazel Park Race track. Highalnd park would send their trash to be consumed by the hogs. There was reference to this in a 1928 report done by some city official on Hazel Park's website. He did not specify what types of waste the hogs would consume, I can't see them eating tin cans and paper. | ||
Mikem Member Username: Mikem Post Number: 3012 Registered: 10-2003 |
Bulletmagnet, the Farms garbage collectors went on strike in the late 1940s and were all fired by the city. To deal with the loss of the workers, the city dug pits on those grounds and the residents brought their trash there to dump it. Not sure how long that continued though, maybe just until new workers could be hired. The Farms used hog farms or piggeries as Cambrian mentioned, until a pig disease outbreak in the early 1950s caused the quarantine of all pigs in the Detroit vicinity. The city then contracted with Detroit to use their incinerator until the Grosse Pointe-Clinton Twp incinerator was built. | ||
Harsensis Member Username: Harsensis Post Number: 161 Registered: 07-2005 |
The field just down the street from Kerby Field where Brownell Middle School is located was used for an Army training camp. I wonder what is buried there? I know when I was talking to the Assistance principal last year he said they are going to be doing some building and they don't know what they will find when they start digging. | ||
Mikem Member Username: Mikem Post Number: 3017 Registered: 10-2003 |
That field was only occupied by the Army for only a few years, ~ 1953-1956. It was an anti-aircraft artillery site as was the park at the foot of Three Mile Drive. | ||
Harsensis Member Username: Harsensis Post Number: 162 Registered: 07-2005 |
I knew you be right there to set me straight Mike! Thanks JJ | ||
Mikem Member Username: Mikem Post Number: 3018 Registered: 10-2003 |
I though this was in the archives somewhere, but I couldn't find it. Anti-aircraft artillery sites around Detroit, circa 1951-1956:  | ||
Livernoisyard Member Username: Livernoisyard Post Number: 2375 Registered: 10-2004 |
Were there only three GPs back then? | ||
Planner_727 Member Username: Planner_727 Post Number: 81 Registered: 07-2006 |
The light green immediately north of the "GPF" is grosse pointe woods. Grosse Pointe Shores often doesn't show up on maps because it is not a City, but a rather a Village. Voting, etc is still based in the two townships that GPShores is located in. That map also has two white spots for Royal Oak Twp near Ferndale. (Message edited by Planner_727 on February 04, 2007) | ||
Bulletmagnet Member Username: Bulletmagnet Post Number: 18 Registered: 01-2007 |
Thanks for the input Mikem. I remember hearing talk of that strike, but mistook it for one in the sixtys.This one only lasted for three days, and this time residents dumped their trash behind the DPW garage. The result of the strike was a 10 cent pay raise. I do know that garbage was hauled to a hog farm in Rochester. The Farms Pier Park is also backfilled with all kinds of trash, rocks dirt, and what have you. After Christmas the trees would be burned in the parking lot untill the practice was stopped after the asphalt melted. Speaking of garbage, do you recall a time in Detroit when garbage was collected from the backyard? A worker would come up the drive with a hand truck and take the garbage (wrapped in newspaper) to the truck. They wore black rubber gloves and apron over a uniform of mattress ticking. Back yard trash barrels for burning were also allowed. I would throw my sisters empty Aqua Net hair spray cans into the fire and wait for it to launch into orbit! We would burn our elm leaves at the curb too. BTW, the flag in your map at GPF is located at what is now Brownell school. Highland Park has their water inlet in the Farms too, at the foot of Moross. | ||
Bob_cosgrove Member Username: Bob_cosgrove Post Number: 460 Registered: 03-2005 |
Before I knew him, my brother-in-law was the battery commander of Brownell School 90mm gun site. The 90mm Skysweeper radar-guided guns were there and at the other Detroit sites in the mid-1950's until replaced by the Nike Ajax Missile sites, one of which was on the Lake St. Clair tip end of Belle Isle. The gunners slept in tents while on duty at Brownell. Gun sites this close to the target in the post-atomic era were really an expensive military public relations/war alert program throughout the country. They were intended in my opinion more to get us aware of the Russian threat than to ever have hopes of actually stopping them. If those Rusky bombers even with convential bombs had ever gotten as close as Grosse Pointe or any of these Gun sites they would have been able to demolish Detroit. Bob Cosgrove | ||
Bulletmagnet Member Username: Bulletmagnet Post Number: 22 Registered: 01-2007 |
B.C.,does your bro-in-law have any photos of the site he would care to share? I remember when the missels were removed from Belle Isle. I was a kid on an adventure along the lake front near Moross. A police escort came roaring down Lake Shore Dr followed by an army flatbed simi-truck with a bunch of olive green missels loaded on the trailer. In a flash they ware gone. Are you related in any way to Pat Cosgrove, the GPF DPW supervisor in the late 70's? | ||
Mikem Member Username: Mikem Post Number: 3023 Registered: 10-2003 |
The gun sites were a constant source of irritation to the residents. Foul language, loud music at all hours, drunkeness, speeding on the streets, "entertaining" girls, etc...all the things you'd expect of soldiers. The local councils held several meetings with the Army and threatened not to renew their lease on the property, but things settled down and before long they were gone. Of course other residents were appreciative of their mission and tried to make the soldiers feel at home; inviting them to social functions, taking public tours of the sites, baking pies for the soldiers, and so on. What an odd sight it must have been for a 50's house wife to be washing her dishes and to look out the kitchen window and see a dozen gun barrels pointed skyward.  | ||
Bob_cosgrove Member Username: Bob_cosgrove Post Number: 461 Registered: 03-2005 |
Bulletmanget: I'm not related to any of the Cosgroves in metro Detroit, but my daughter lives in Dearborn. My branch of the Cosgrove family (originally O'Cosgrave) have been Protestants since they came over c.1799. But, I'm happy to report my two sons, Doug of Monroe and Brad of Lambertville, are Catholilcs of which I'm very proud of their choice due to marriage. Mikem: My brother-in-law Captain Charles Quick, the Brownell School Yard AA Battery Commander, was also frustrated by his artillerymen coming back on the Mack Avenue bus, who had to walk down Manor Road to the gun site. Some were probably half buzzed after a night on the town to annoyance of those living on Manor. Can you manage the collateral damage to the neighborhing homes if any of those 90mm batteries had to fire in their residential sites. And, that's not to mention what would happen with the defective rounds whose time or VT fuses won't work and the fell back on the city. Bob Cosgrove | ||
Bulletmagnet Member Username: Bulletmagnet Post Number: 25 Registered: 01-2007 |
Thanks for the groovy photo Mikem. I'm beginning to think you have pictures of the french settlers! Shooting a gun like that off in the city would have been just plain silly. Look what happened at Hawaii when Japan attacked. Rounds fell back to earth and killed some poor hapless people going to church. I must say, I would have liked to gotten a chance to talk to Cappy Quick. (cool name, too!) | ||
Patrick Member Username: Patrick Post Number: 3996 Registered: 10-2003 |
There is a former dump in Warren behind their water treatment plant. It is off of Van Dyke down the street with the Taco Bell/Checkers on the corner. It is now a huge hill where all the kids would go sledding. Must have been closed in the 50's. | ||
Harsensis Member Username: Harsensis Post Number: 163 Registered: 07-2005 |
Bullet, does your first name begin with an H and are you always way ahead of the other guys on your route? Mike, Do you know where that photo was taken, or does that just represent what was at Brownell? Thanks in advance. JJ | ||
Mikem Member Username: Mikem Post Number: 3031 Registered: 10-2003 |
Just a representation of what was at Brownell and Patterson Park. I can't remember how many would be at a typical site - less than a dozen; maybe only four at smaller sites. They wer radar guided and firing had to be co-ordinated with each other as well as other sites. | ||
Mikem Member Username: Mikem Post Number: 3036 Registered: 10-2003 |
Yes, "just" 4 guns:  | ||
Bulletmagnet Member Username: Bulletmagnet Post Number: 26 Registered: 01-2007 |
Harsensis, I am not "H", a 40+ year laborer of the Farms DPW. I am "E" the driver extraordinaire and baby sitter of said route. I started working for the city back in 79, and have seen a lot of guys come and go, but not this one. I think he'll probably die on the job before he considers retirement. You have my permission to shoot me if I get like that. (jk) Hmm, you J.J.? | ||
Harsensis Member Username: Harsensis Post Number: 164 Registered: 07-2005 |
Bullet, yes I am JJ. I have been offline for a week since my laptop hard drive crashed. I have been using my old desktop and can't be on this as much. | ||
Lowell Board Administrator Username: Lowell Post Number: 3656 Registered: 10-2003 |
Bulletmagnet, my Highland Park house [72-99] had a concrete garbage box. It was thick rat proof concrete with about 2 cubic feet interior had a metal lid on top. It sat against the rear fence and had another door that opened from the alley side about waist height. It was no longer use by the time I got the house. At that time, we sat traditional metal garbage cans on a rack near the back fence gate. The HP collectors would enter and with great clatter dump the refuse in their trucks. I was always curious when they were no longer used and trash and garbage no longer separated for collection. In the small town where I grew up, there was no trash collection. So people burned their paper trash in burn baskets and buried their food garbage in garden pits. Almost every house had a garden, so they would dig a pit and gradually fill it, then create another. What couldn't be burned was collected in paper grocery bags and periodically taken, along with big items, to the town dump - a former gravel pit where it was tossed over the edge. A dump keeper would set the dump on fire a couple of times a week stinking up everything around it. No pollution concerns in those days when leaves were also burned at the street side the autumn. Older parts of the dump that were never burned became overgrown and made for an interesting playground with all kinds of interesting discoveries. Of course there was far less trash then, few things came with the excessive packaging that surrounds every object we buy and we didn't buy that much. I am willing to bet every urban sprawled old community in Detroit, like Royal Oak, Farmington, Northville, Romeo, has an old dump that has been landscaped over like the one in my little hometown. | ||
The_rock Member Username: The_rock Post Number: 1568 Registered: 11-2003 |
The old Birmingham dump used to be the large field at Lincoln and Cranbrook, running up to Midvale to the north. When I grew up there, it was pretty much covered over with field growth, but rusty tin cans were still prevelant in the low-lying area ( along with skunks, possums, various small critters and the occasional piles of old Detroit Shopping News left by delivery boys who did not want to deliver). That location became the site of the "new" Birmingham High School in the early 50's, and is now Seaholm High School. | ||
Wilderness Member Username: Wilderness Post Number: 35 Registered: 09-2006 |
Hazel Park racetrack was a landfill in the late 1930's and early 1940's. |
