EDITOR’S NOTE: Superiorland Yesterdays is prepared by the reference staff at the Peter White Public Library in Marquette.

30 years ago

MARQUETTE — Sterile sea lamprey will be dumped into tributaries of Lake Superior again this spring in the federal government’s continuing war on the destructive parasite. Starting Thursday, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will release 18,500 sterile male lamprey into 27 Lake Superior streams, including 16 streams in the Upper Peninsula. “Last year was the first year we used the sterilized males. We put them in 10 streams in the U.P. from Baraga east and this year we’re doing 27, including six in Ontario,” said John Heinrich, fishery biologist at the Fish and Wildlife Service’s Marquette Lamprey Control Station. The process involves the chemical sterilization of male lamprey that are planted at a 1.8-to-1 male-female ratio. Biologists hope mating the sterile lamprey will result in a 65 percent decrease in the population of the parasites in select streams. Results won’t be known for at least six to 10 years, Heinrich said. Wildlife Service employees will survey several other Superiorland streams to determine whether they need lamprey treatment.

60 years ago

MARQUETTE — Fourteen Marquette area civic leaders have returned from an Atlas missile briefing and orientation trip to Forbes Air Force Base, Topeka, Kansas. Arrangements for the trip were made by Col. William B. Kyes, commander of the 4042nd Strategic Wing of the Strategic Air Command at K.I. Sawyer Air Base. The briefing, sponsored by the Strategic Air Command, is designed to display to the civilian public some of the more modern means of weapons and weapons systems employed by today’s modern Air Force. Leaving in a military VC-97 aircraft, the group arrived at Forbes AFB at approximately 5 p.m. At dinner that evening, the group was welcomed by Col. Gerald M. Clugston, commander of the 548th Missile Squadron at Forbes. Part of their visit included a briefing on the Atlas, the first operational intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), which is designed to deliver a nuclear warhead to targets 6,300 miles away.