A freighter keeps moving. A small boat pulls alongside. High above the water, a bucket descends on a rope. For a sailor waiting for news from home, this is the delivery that matters.

In this episode of End of the Road in Michigan, we follow the J.W. Westcott Company from its beginnings in 1874 to its role as Detroit’s floating mail service. Capt. John Ward Westcott started by carrying shipping instructions to passing vessels. His practical solution grew into a business delivering letters, packages, supplies and even pizza.

Meet the 45-foot J.W. Westcott II, learn how ZIP code 48222 serves people aboard passing ships, and hear why this unusual delivery route has lasted more than 150 years. It’s a Michigan maritime story about skilled boat crews, changing technology and the lasting pleasure of receiving something from home.

Listen along, and follow End of the Road in Michigan for more stories about Michigan’s people and past.


The End of the Road in Michigan is a production of Thumbwind Publications

On Oct. 22, 1929, the railroad car ferry Milwaukee left Wisconsin for Grand Haven, Michigan, despite a severe storm raging across Lake Michigan.

The 338-foot vessel carried 25 loaded railroad cars and nearly 50 crew members. Other captains had chosen to remain in port, but Capt. Robert “Bad Weather” McKay headed into the gale.

The Milwaukee never reached Michigan.

Days later, bodies, lifeboats and wreckage began washing ashore. Then searchers found something remarkable: a watertight message container holding a handwritten note from the ship’s purser.

“The ship is making water fast,” he wrote. “Seas are tremendous. Things look bad.”

There were no survivors.

In this episode of End of the Road in Michigan, we follow the final voyage of the Milwaukee, examine why the ship sailed, what may have caused it to sink and how a small piece of paper became the final voice of a lost Great Lakes crew.

The wreck remained missing for more than 40 years before divers found it sitting upright beneath Lake Michigan, still holding railroad cars and cargo from its final crossing.

The End of the Road in Michigan is a production of Thumbwind Publications

In the winter of 1936-37, General Motors workers in Flint, Michigan, did something radical: they stopped working and refused to leave the factories.

For 44 days, workers occupied key GM plants while police, courts, company officials, Michigan Gov. Frank Murphy and the National Guard tried to determine how the standoff would end. Women organized emergency brigades, violence erupted outside Fisher Body Plant No. 2, and union leaders pulled off a clever decoy that helped workers seize the critical Chevrolet Plant No. 4.

In this Labor Day weekend episode of End of the Road in Michigan, we tell the story of the Flint Sit-Down Strike, the people who risked their jobs to challenge one of the most powerful corporations in America, and the agreement that helped transform organized labor in the auto industry.It is a Michigan story about factories, power, cold winter nights and 44 days that changed American labor history.

The End of the Road in Michigan is a production of Thumbwind Publications

This episode includes AI-generated content.

Algonac, Michigan, became the birthplace of Chris-Craft on a river crowded with steamers, fishing boats and summer visitors. This Michigan Moments episode follows the town from 1890 to 1940, when electric interurbans met horse-drawn wagons and polished mahogany runabouts began leaving local boat shops.

Hear how Christopher Columbus Smith turned his knowledge of the St. Clair River into a national boatbuilding business. Follow his work with racing champion Gar Wood, the record-setting Miss America boats and Algonac’s rise as a center of powerboat racing.

The story also visits Main Street, the Starlight dance pavilion, waterfront hotels, tourist cabins and the neighboring Anishinaabe community of Bkejwanong. One surprising chapter shows how an abandoned passenger railway returned to service hauling supplies and finished Chris-Craft boats.

It is the story of a small Michigan town that changed how Americans spent their time on the water.


The End of the Road in Michigan is a production of Thumbwind Publications

At the mouth of the St. Clair River, a maze of channels and islands became Detroit’s favorite summer escape. Steamers carried families to Harsens Island, Tashmoo Park, private clubs and waterfront hotels where the docks served as front doors.

This episode of The End of the Road in Michigan traces the history of the St. Clair Flats from its Anishinaabe roots and early navigation channels through the peak of its resort era. It follows the famous steamer Tashmoo, its close 1901 race against the City of Erie and the 1936 accident that ended its career.

The story also examines the area’s strangest legal question. Residents could own their cottages while leasing the lake bottom beneath them from the state of Michigan.

Through a narrative, History of St. Clair Flats: A Voyage to Detroit’s Lost Island Playground recounts how water shaped transportation, recreation, property ownership, and daily life in one of Michigan’s most unusual communities.

The End of the Road in Michigan is a production of Thumbwind Publications

When copper mines closed during the Great Depression, more than three-quarters of Keweenaw County’s workforce was reportedly unemployed. Local and federal officials responded with three major public projects that helped create a new tourism economy at Michigan’s northern tip.

This episode of End of the Road in Michigan examines the construction of Brockway Mountain Drive, Ocha Potter’s controversial Keweenaw Park and Golf Course, and the early development of Isle Royale National Park.

Relief workers carved a road across Brockway Mountain, cleared thousands of trees and stumps for a publicly owned resort, and built early visitor facilities on Isle Royale. Critics dismissed Potter’s golf course as “Potter’s Folly,” but the lodge, road and national park remain important Keweenaw attractions more than 90 years later.

These projects did not replace the copper industry or end the region’s hardship. They did, however, provide wages, build lasting public facilities and help establish Copper Harbor as a major Michigan vacation destination.
#MichiganHistory #KeweenawPeninsula #CopperHarbor #IsleRoyale #GreatDepression

The End of the Road in Michigan is a production of Thumbwind Publications

This episode includes AI-generated content.

On a cold November morning in 1926, fifty-one miners descended into the Barnes-Hecker Mine near Ishpeming expecting another ordinary shift. Minutes later, a violent collapse sent water, mud, and thousands of tons of earth crashing into the underground workings.

Only one miner escaped.

Forty-one men were never recovered and remain buried beneath Michigan's Upper Peninsula nearly a century later.

In this episode of End of the Road in Michigan, we reconstruct the disaster minute by minute using historical records, eyewitness accounts, and modern research. You'll hear the remarkable story of Wilfred Wills, the lone survivor who climbed nearly 800 feet to safety, the families who waited at the mine entrance for news that never came and the questions that still surround Michigan's deadliest mining disaster.

This is more than the story of a mine collapse. It is a story about courage, sacrifice, and a community forever changed by one of the worst industrial tragedies in American history.

Join us as we remember the fifty-one men of the Barnes-Hecker Mine.

The End of the Road in Michigan is a production of Thumbwind Publications

On Oct. 15, 1908, a freight train pulled away from Metz, Michigan, carrying families trying to escape one of the worst forest fires in state history.

The passengers believed the railroad would carry them to safety. Instead, the train entered a burning corridor lined with cedar posts, railroad ties, hemlock bark and timber. Heat had damaged the tracks, and the locomotive derailed near Nowicki’s Siding. The open freight cars behind it became a deadly trap.

In this episode of The End of the Road in Michigan, we revisit the Metz Fire of 1908, the doomed relief train and the families caught between flames on both sides of the track. The story includes the desperate evacuation, the survivors who crawled through smoke and burning ground, and the residents who stayed behind and lived.

The fire killed 37 people across Presque Isle County, destroyed much of Metz and left hundreds without homes as winter approached. It also exposed the dangers created by logging waste, drought and the lack of organized emergency planning in early 20th-century Michigan.

This is the story of a village built by the railroad—and the night that railroad carried its people into the fire.

The End of the Road in Michigan is a production of Thumbwind Publications

This episode includes AI-generated content.

In June 1968, Richard and Shirley Robison took their four children to the family’s secluded summer cottage near Good Hart, Michigan. Twenty-seven days later, a caretaker entered the locked home and found all six members of the family dead.

Investigators built a strong circumstantial case against Richard’s employee, Joseph Scolaro, pointing to missing business funds, an unexplained gap in his movements and links to weapons connected to the crime.

But prosecutors never brought the case to trial, and Scolaro died before a jury could hear the evidence.

In this episode of End of the Road in Michigan, we examine the crime scene, the delayed discovery, the prime suspect and the question that still divides investigators and true-crime researchers: Was the Good Hart case solved in everything but a courtroom?

The End of the Road in Michigan is a production of Thumbwind Publications

This episode includes AI-generated content.

Before dawn on Nov. 29, 1966, the Great Lakes freighter Daniel J. Morrell broke in two during a violent storm on Lake Huron.

Twenty-nine men were aboard. Only one came home.

Watchman Dennis Hale escaped onto a life raft with three crewmates. One by one, the other men died from exposure as the raft drifted through freezing spray, towering waves and two nights of darkness. Hale remained alone for 38 hours before a Coast Guard helicopter spotted movement on what appeared to be a raft carrying four bodies.

In this episode of End of the Road in Michigan, we follow the Morrell’s final voyage, the terrifying sight of its powered stern racing through the storm, the delayed search and the remarkable survival of the man who lifted one arm toward the sky.

The End of the Road in Michigan is a production of Thumbwind Publications

This episode includes AI-generated content.