Largely forgotten, migrants toiled where others wouldn’t

By Thomas Benn
Sun contributor
Nestled alongside the highway opposite the Apple Blossom Drive entrance to the Leelanau Orchards top-of-the-line real estate development stands the more modest former seasonal residence of the Chavez and Campos families. Their names are still legible on the doors of the small cinder-block quarters for Mexican migrant workers who were here in the 1950s and 60s harvesting the fruits of Leelanau County cherry and apple orchards.

This was row housing without amenities. Six rooms remain, each roughly the size of a compact prison cell – about 12 by 22 feet. Each contains four wooden bunks, two up, two down, each wide enough to sleep at least two. Inside one of the two small windows at either end of the Chavez unit, stuffing spills out of the thin mattresses. The floor is concrete. Neighbors shared a chimney with holes for wood-burning stove pipes. An old refrigerator lies on its side in the corner. There is one small table, one overhead light outlet in each room.
Outside, about 20 paces to the rear, are the ruins of two three-hole wooden outhouses. In sites where the growers drilled for wells to obtain water for cooling cherries, migrant worker camps had access to water from a communal pump. It is unclear whether such a pump was ever located here.
The occupants of this shelter may have been crew leaders who returned every year because, by the standards of the period, the accommodations were relatively commodious. Entire other migrant families lived in the trucks that brought them, or in tents on cots, or in horse barns and warehouses. They were without heat, kitchen and sanitation facilities, medical care, protection from pesticides, or schooling opportunities for the young.
The structure on M-22 is one of the disappearing relics of a labor importation era that most of the old settlers of the Empire-Glen Arbor area would prefer to have forgotten. No tears are likely to be shed when this building is removed, as it will be soon. No preservation societies are being formed, no sentimental ballads sung, no plaques hung to commemorate the contribution of these visitors to the life and economy of the area.
The Leelanau Conservancy purchased the land on which this particular building is located from the heirs of the Clagett orchards for what has become the Chippewa Run Natural Area. The conservancy plans to take down the building (and the outhouses) as soon as funds are available. Dave Taghon, the eminence grise of Empire history, agrees that they do not belong on the conservancy’s Gateway to Empire. Nor is the Leelanau Scenic Heritage Route Committee noticeably disappointed by the pending elimination from the M-22 corridor of this sorry, unattractive landmark.
More than 35,000 itinerant farm workers were needed annually in the Grand Traverse area at the end of the 1950s. Now, thanks to mechanical cherry tree shakers, the number of migrant workers in the area has shrunk to less than 4,500, most of them here during the autumn apple season. Many of the old orchards in the southwestern corner of Leelanau County have become – like Leelanau Orchards – the scenic backdrop for high-priced housing developments. Until they were broken up, Empire’s Storm Hill Orchards — owned by the Edward F. Clagett family of Saginaw — extended north from the village along M-22.
Commercial fruit production contributed substantially to the Leelanau economy throughout much of the last century. By the late 1800s several large orchards around Northport, Glen Arbor, Grelickville, and Lee’s Point already were shipping their crops by boat to other cities on the Great Lakes. Owners of the Empire Lumber Co. planted fruit trees after clearing the land of timber. They displayed 87 varieties of locally grown apples at the county fairs. After the lumber mill burned in 1917, other growers got into the business in a big way around Empire.
The timely snipping of ripe cherries by hand required crews of seasonal workers. Beginning in the 1920s, Mexican-Americans began traveling a northerly circuit from southern Texas that often ended in the sugar beet, pickle, and strawberry fields, and in the cherry and apple orchards, of Michigan. Except for the depression years of the 1930s, when many native-born Americans were desperate for jobs, families of Mexican background continued to do the work at wages considered affordable by the growers.
Mark Deering, Jr., said the general pattern in the mid-1900s was for half the grower’s cash price to be paid in wages for the pickers. Along with their own orchards, Mark and his brothers Warren and Richard also founded the leading processing plant in the region, still operating under other management as the Triple-D Orchards Co.
The need for a dependable supply of short-term workers gave rise to the bracero program between 1951 and 1964. The Mexican government arranged for teams of workers and their families to enter the U.S. temporarily for assignment to qualified farms and orchards. Opposition from organized labor (because of the depressing effect on wages); stricter government enforcement of child labor and health and safety laws; and in the case of the cherry industry the invention of the shaking machine, brought an end to the bracero era.
A typical family unit in the 1960s consisted often of a grandmother who cared for the young children while both parents and children eight years old and older worked a six-day week in the orchards. Cherry pickers were paid a base rate that varied between 50 cents and 80 cents a lug, plus a 10 cents per lug bonus for those who stayed until the job was done. Deering said a good picker could fill 120 16-quart lugs in a week.
As many as 1,400 migrant workers and relatives would arrive every year at the Cahodas brothers orchards. Said to have been the largest operation in Michigan, the Cahodas tracts encompassed 300 to 400 acres of cherry and apple trees. Lake View Orchard “view lots” are now being marketed on part of the orchard uplands, off M-72 a couple of miles southeast of Empire. Sam Cahodas started as a produce retailer in Ishpeming in the Upper Peninsula. Eventually he owned banks all over the U.P and became one of the nation’s biggest fruit producers with holdings in California and the Yakima valley of Washington as well as in Leelanau County.
“Entire villages of tents were created” to house Cahodas workers, according to an Empire Area Heritage Group publication. More durable row structures came later modeled after the “motel” architecture at the entrance to Empire. Some of these buildings still stand in the midst of the lots for sale.
Dave Taghon can remember groups of families walking together into Empire in their best duds to shop or attend Mass at St. Philip Neri Catholic Church. For several years, a Spanish-speaking Catholic priest and two seminarians followed workers from the San Antonio area to administer to the spiritual needs of the itinerant faithful. Parishioners at St. Mary’s Church in Lake Leelanau made a house available to the priest and donated shoes and clothing for needy adults and children.
At other times the family groups would head for the Empire beach, a favorite spot for swimming and bathing.
Other nearby orchards totaling 190 acres in cherry trees were owned by Magnus Fredrickson, the son of Norwegian immigrants. He started out in 1926. With two camps of between 80 and 100 migrant workers, the Fredricksons also upgraded from tents to cinder-block quarters in the late 1950s. His grandson, David Fredrickson, said the structures were well built with showers, kitchens, and laundry facilities. David’s father, the late James Fredrickson, who practiced law before taking over the management of the family orchards, participated in Michigan State University’s experimental development of the first shaking machines. By the 1970s, most producers had adopted effective machines that would shake the cherries onto a mat without damaging the fruit or the trees.
The Fredricksons had a reputation for being thoughtful employers. Magnus and his wife, Ruth, would sometimes prepare meals for their entire work force.
Overall, however, the residents of the county were quite ambivalent about their visitors. The Leelanau Enterprise-Tribune expressed the views of many in this (Aug.15, 1959) editorial:
“There always is a certain amount of criticism leveled against these persons for their ‘recreational’ activities. Every summer a few of them are involved in knifings, assaults, and other crimes. Always there are auto accidents, arrests for drunken driving, and for being drunk and disorderly.
“But most are honest, hard-working people. Many come here in families. They manage to appear neat and clean in spite of sometimes difficult circumstances. They attend church, they respect the rights of others, they work long hours in the hot sun. The life they live and the living they earn are not easy.
“From an economic standpoint, the itinerant workers have a very great value. They do the hard work of harvest that other persons are unwilling or unable to do. Nearly all the money earned by these persons remains in the county. They earn it here, spend it here, and leave.”
And spend it here they did. Deerings grocery store in Empire went to considerable lengths to stock pinto beans and other Hispanic specialties. Something resembling company stores existed in other parts of the county. According to one historical account, merchants in Northport sold tokens to growers who used them to pay their workers. Growers then received a commission on the redeemed tokens.
That they leave when their work was done was equally important. By late October, the last apple had been crated, snowflakes were falling, children were shivering in the tents, and the last migrant families were ready to move on. Any who might conceivably have been thinking about permanent residency were clearly not welcome.
Growers resisted tougher regulation by state and federal governments. A spokesman complained that more stringent migrant housing and child labor rules discriminated against large families. Arguing that the workers had come voluntarily, the newspaper suggested that growers here deserved to be praised for providing jobs for those who were unfit – “by training, temperament or education” – for jobs in industry.
Later on, a new source of temporary labor added to the social unease. Some Leelanau growers augmented their work force with teams of African Americans recruited in Florida, unaccompanied usually by family dependents.
Other than the few cinder-block “motels” scattered through the countryside around Empire, few lasting signs of this annual migration remain. Old-timers tend to remember little things about the transient workers. Mark Deering, for example, recalls their dislike of cold beer. “They would order three beers ahead to let the beer warm,” he said. Filmmaker William Jamerson’s documentary, “Fruit of Dreams: The Cherry Pickers of Traverse City,” quoted an observer who could not recall having ever heard a migrant worker’s child cry.
Interestingly, during this same period a different kind of migration brought several thousand Air Force service personnel to brief terms of duty at the radar station overlooking Empire. Many of them married local women, returned later to settle in the area, and are prominent today in the political life of the community. By way of contrast the census of 2,000 counted a mere 2.5 percent of the county population who described themselves as being of Mexican ancestry.
The massive influx of orchard workers is past. The state now licenses migrant worker camps. Minimum wage requirements are enforced. Food stamps and other forms of assistance are available at special service centers. School-age children can attend classes. Some live in mobile homes while their parents help with the orchard harvests for up to five months at a stretch.
The function of local museums is to save what the people themselves want to remember and to call to the attention of outsiders. An exhibit was added, for example, to Empire’s magnificent little museum not long ago in celebration of the rodeos that were held by the Midwest Cowboys Assn. at the Golden Valley Ranch close by the migrant camps east of town. But nowhere are there any reminders of Chavez and Campos and the other families who arrived every year to do the work in the nearby orchards that others were unwilling or unable to do.