Osborn Gift Enriches University

By NORMAN H. HILL, '11
Ex-Director of Alumni Association and Former Editor of "Soo" Evening News
The Michigan Alumnus, Vol. 36(3), 1929.

COMING to the University as the joint gift of Hon. Chase S. Osborn and his son, Colonel George A. Osborn, the valuable tract of land embodied in Duck Island and Sugar Island south of Sault Ste. Marie in the Upper Peninsula has been offered and accepted by the Board of Regents. Included in this valuable gift is a library of the former Governor of the State and Regent of the University housed on Duck Island.

Chase S. Osborn is an alumnus of the University by virtue of the honorary degree bestowed upon him in 1911. His son graduated from Michigan in 1908 and has achieved distinction by his newspaper activities. This is far from the first gift which Mr. Osborn has made to the University, his benefactions having been many and varied and his interest always of a high type.

The following is the letter from Mr. Osborn which makes the gift:

I shall be happy to deed my so-called Duck Island Preserve of over three thou-sand acres to the University. There shall be no restrictions except a life tenancy on Duck Island containing about one hundred sixty acres. My library of several thousand books, some of which are rare, goes with the gift. It is now stored in the fireproof go-down. This property is improved and beautiful and has unusual versatility. There are more than ten miles or sixty thousand feet of waterfront. It is blocked solid for five miles. This message shall be your authority to ask the Regents to act on the matter. Name and other considerations shall be discussed later.

In accepting the gift the Regents passed the following resolution:

RESOLVED: That we, the Regents of the University of Michigan, accept with gratitude the splendid gift of over three thousand acres of land including a part of Duck Island and some adjacent islands with the several buildings thereon and a library of several thousand books offered to the University by the Honorable Chase S. Osborn under the condition that the gift be recognized as a joint gift from Chase S. Osborn and George Augustus Osborn and that Dr. Chase S. Osborn reserves a life tenancy of Duck Island.
RESOLVED: That this land shall for the present be used principally for research and instruction in the natural sciences and forestry.
RESOLVED: That the land be known as the Chase S. Osborn Preserve of the University of Michigan, and that it be
RESOLVED further, that we tender to Honorable Chase S. Osborn and Colonel George Augustus Osborn, in behalf of the University, deep appreciation of this benefaction and of the spirit of the donors which gives to the University a valuable gift in a form which will insure its most effective use both now and in the future.

ABOUT twenty miles below Sault Ste. Marie, or. as Chase Osborn would put it, le Sault de Sainte Marie, on the so-called "old channel" of the historic and rarely beautiful St. Mary's river, is Duck Island. which has been for many years the real home of Michigan's former governor and foremost citizen. To Duck Island the Iron Hunter has gone early in the Spring and at Duck Island he has stayed until late fall, so late, in fact, that it has frequently been necessary to break out the ice from around the Zhe Shebe Minis, before that sturdy gas-powered cabin cruiser could start on her final trip of the year to the Sault.

Duck Island proper is less than a mile long and is narrow. At its lower end is a boat house and dock, from which a trail winds about thirty or forty feet to a simple log cabin, which is the main building on the island, a large living room with a big fireplace, beds in the corners which can be curtained off at night and a small dining room and kitchen in the rear.

Just in front of this cabin is a concrete vault-room, which houses the Iron Hunter's library. Across the clearing fifty or sixty feet distant is a smaller log cabin, of just one room, about eighteen by fifteen, which is the home of Chase Osborn and is called Little Duck, the other and larger cabin being Big Duck and being used by the guests.

Trails lead in two directions from the clearing. One back, several hundred yards, to a little rustic bridge not ten feet from a beaver darn which connects Duck Island and Sugar Island, the other trail taking one clear to the north end of the small island. It is a short walk, which could be covered in ten minutes, yet no one has ever taken it in ten minutes with Chase Osborn. Perhaps an hour, if the idea was a constitutional, more like two or three hours- hours which passed like minutes in the company of the best-informed man in the world. Scores, yes, hundreds, of the great and talented of this country and of other countries have taken this and other walks with Chase Osborn and have come away marvelling at the remarkable man who lives in solitary simplicity there. University professors and presidents, millionaires and men with very little in the way of worldly wealth (Chase Osborn alwavs holds open house for his many newspapermen friends) senators and merchants, authors and out-of-doors lovers, they have all been at Duck Island at one time or another.

Dean Mortimer Cooley used to come often, as did his brother Charles, of Chicago. The latter came one time for a week at the same time that the famous Emerson Hough was there. The writer of these lines was interested in the manner in which Mr. Osborn placed both "Uncle Charley" Cooley. who came with what seemed to us the world's greatest collection of trout flies, and Mr. Hough, then the editor of the Out-of-Doors columns of the Saturday Evening Post and a world authority on fishing and hunting, in the infant class and made them like it.

Another man of Michigan associations, the well known Paul De Kruif, spent two days at Duck Island and came away declaring "I've met the greatest man in the world. Wouldn't have missed those two days for a million." This was when he was gathering material for his latest book, just published, Seven Iron Men, and it would not surprise us to see a De Kruif book on Osborn one of these days.

On the Sugar Island mainland, perhaps an eighth of a mile from the lower tip of Duck Island, is a large and comparatively magnificent and luxurious cabin, built by Mr. Osborn several years ago as a surprise gift to one of his sons. Not far distant is an unpretentious frame dwelling occupied by some Indians, for years friends of the "Big Chief" of Duck Island. Up the other way, toward Lake George, the untouched forest extends for almost two miles. The shoreline for several miles adjacent to Duck Island is owned by Mr. Osborn. He is alone in his glory.

Duck Island
By Lee J. Smits of Detroit

DUCK ISLAND, the abode of Michigan's Iron Hunter, is where the old channel leaves Lake George, which may have little meaning for those unacquainted with the great waterway linking Lake Superior with Lake Huron.

From his log cabin, Governor Osborn looks off to the blue hills of the Algoma wilderness. Two lines of steel are about the only marks of man that cut his front yard as it extends to the Arctic, and they are far from sight and hearing.

The explorers and the fur traders, navigating the St. Mary's, came along that way, through the whitewater of the snaky Neebish rapids and into the broad reaches of Lake George. In Schooner days, there was a wild little settlement on Duck Island where wood-cutters piled up fuel for the tugs. Now the channel is deserted, save for an occasional raft of pulpwood.

Duck Island fits into the lower end of Sugar Island, on the Canadian side. Behind it is Duck Lake and Sweet Gale Lake, a beaver pond. On quiet nights, if a beaver slaps the water with his tail, it is audible in the Osborn cabin.

He has there a spacious guest cabin and his Chippewa dependents silently render the services of an unpretentiously perfect hospitality to the fortunate wayfarer. Then there is the stronghouse, of stone and steel, which safeguards from the annual peril of forest fire a library which includes many irreplacable volumes. A few paces removed is the one-room cabin in which Governor Osborn resides for more than half a year.

There are no automobiles. Mail goes through the lighthouse station three miles away. Moose, deer and bear are in the neighborhood. John Joseph, an Ojibwa patriarch, makes drums with woodchuck hide and chants sagas for his friend.