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

30 years ago

MARQUETTE — The city of Marquette has joined the Upper Peninsula Road Builders’ Association in a lawsuit filed against Gov. John Engler for cutting the Local Services Division of the state Department of Transportation. The division, which was eliminated Oct. 11, was responsible for returning funds collected from gas and weight taxes to communities and county road commissions. By law, the state can’t use those funds elsewhere. Plans are for other MDOT divisions to handle returning the tax money to local road authorities. The city of Marquette currently gets about $700,000 a year from the division for road work, said City Manager Dale Iman. “Personally, I’m not sure if it would effect the city of Marquette either way,” Iman said. “It could be under the governor’s plan we’d be better off, but we’ve had a pretty good experience working with the system the way it was.” The suit was filed Oct. 7 in Dickinson County Circuit Court by the association, a group of all county road commissions in the U.P. The association claims road commissions need the division to operate efficiently and that the state will not provide equivalent services.

60 years ago

MARQUETTE — A Marquette man who escaped from a Wisconsin prison camp Oct. 22 was arrested here late yesterday afternoon, after law enforcement officers in the area conducted an extensive manhunt throughout the city. The man, who was serving a 20-year term in the Waupun Prison Camp at Fox Lake, Wis., was spotted in a car early yesterday afternoon by City Police Chief Donald C. Hermanson and Marquette County Undersheriff Adrian A. Pequet, who had been alerted regarding the fugitive’s escape and were cruising the area in a patrol car looking for him. However, it was not until 4:45 p.m. that the man, hiding behind a tree in the 100th block of Genesee St., was arrested by City Detective George G. Johnson and subsequently taken to jail. At one point the man was seen walking along Adams St. by Sgt. Woodrow Betts of the city police. Betts called to the prisoner and told him to halt. When he did not do so, Betts, fired two shots which, according to Hermanson, “didn’t slow him down at all” but made him run faster. Neither shot hit the running man. At the time of his capture, he was surrounded by numerous law officers and Hermanson estimated, about a dozen police cars which had closed in, after the report that he was in the South Marquette area encompassing Adams and Genesee streets.