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

30 years ago

MARQUETTE — Northern Michigan University’s declining enrollment isn’t as bad as it might seem, school officials told the Board of Control Friday. While enrollment dropped nearly 2.5 percent to 8,515 this fall, that figure is still 1 percent above the fall 1991 enrollment of 8,483. Board Chairman Leo F. Egan and NMU President William Vandament stressed it’s too soon to know whether the decline is the beginning of a trend or simply a one-year aberration. One reason for the decline, Vandament said, could be the downsizing of Sawyer Air Force Base, which will close in 1995. One of the base’s two major squadrons left this fall.

60 years ago

LANSING — Trophy hunters already are lining up their gunsights. A shooting season at Michigan’s elk herd appears inevitable. Conservation Department experts, like Ralph MacMullan, who made a survey for the game department, recommend it. “There are just too many elk,” reported MacMullan of the herd of some 3,000 now spreading out from the Pigeon River area. “If they keep increasing, they will double every five years.” MacMullan told the Conservation Commision that between 400 and 500 elk could be harvested each year without damage to the herd.