The unusual bridges of Hillsdale County

Today it's called McCourtie Park, but back in the 1930s they called it Aiden Lair. And it sounds like it was a pretty sweet spot to stop and party if you happened to be a gangster traveling between Detroit and Chicago.

Cement tycoon W.H.L. McCourtie owned the property, a 42-acre chunk of land on US-12 in Hillsdale County. On the property was an unground bar - or rathskeller - that Dave probably would have like, except that McCourtie hosted famous Great Gatsby-esque bashes attended by the likes of Al Capone.

To decorate the landscape, McCourtie hired two Mexican artisans who specialized in sculpting concrete to look like wood - a skill called El Trabajo Rustico. Over a 10-year stretch they created 17 bridges that cross the creek on Aiden Lair, as well as other works that include two enormous tree trunks that served as chimneys for the underground bar's kitchen. The bridges are still there, and so are the tree trunks. The underground bar is left to your imagination.

The Ford House - (lots of) room with a view

At 38,000 square feet, the Albert Kahn-designed Ford House in Grosse Pointe Shores is big enough to hold two Olympic size hockey rinks. Or about 117 of Dave's garage. Or a family of six, which is what it did through most of the last century.

Edsel - the only son of Henry Ford - and Eleanor Ford (that's a statue of them standing on the other side of the pond) lived in the mansion on Lake St. Clair beginning in the late 1920s. Pretty nice digs for their four children - Henry II, Benson, Josephine and William Clay. You might remember the latter as the longtime owner of the Detroit Lions.

 

When she passed away in the 1970s, Eleanor left the home for public use. Nowadays, it's a National Historic Landmark. Visitors can tour the home and the 87-acre property, catch a concert on the lawn in the summer, or grab a meal at the Continental, a restaurant that overlooks the lake.

Old Wyandotte steel mill was a first-of-its-kind

On the shores of the Detroit River, at the southern tip of Bishop Park near downtown Wyandotte, a Michigan Historical Marker remembers a massive steel-making complex that once stood near here. The plant introduced the world to the Bessemer process, a new lower-cost way to mass produce steel.  

It was in the mid-1800s when the Eureka Iron Works introduced the world to the process that was soon adopted by other steel makers. Company headquarters operated out of a building at the corner of Biddle Avenue and Elm Street, where the Wyandotte Savings Bank lived starting in 1871. You can still see the Wyandotte Savings Bank name over the door facing Biddle.

The Eureka Iron Works closed in 1892, way before Dave was born, but by then it had helped the 'Dotte establish its industrial roots.