30 years ago

NEGAUNEE — Susan Rasch had always heard people talk about how great it would be to have a winter festival in western Marquette County. “So I just said, ‘Let’s quit talking about it. Let’s just do it,'” recalled Rasch, owner of the Duck Factory in Negaunee. The result: the inaugural Heikki Lunta Winter Fest, set for Jan. 27 through Feb. 4 in the Negaunee-Ishpeming area. Heikki Lunta, of course, is the mythical Finnish god of snow, who has been busy this winter in the Upper Peninsula. A well known record in the U.P. a few years ago was the “Heikki Lunta Snow Dance Song,” so the name of the event came easily.

60 years ago

ISHPEMING — A dispute between two unions at the Empire Mine construction project near Palmer entered its third week today with efforts at mediation continuing. Fourteen boilermakers and about 400 other workers were involved in a four-day strike, but went back to their jobs Tuesday morning. The project in dispute, structural steel supports for syphon-sizer tanks, is still idled with workers going to other jobs on the site. A jurisdictional dispute stemmed from charges by officials Boilermakers’ Local 169 of Detroit that the Bechtel Corp., contractors at the Empire site, replaced boilermakers on the tank job with ironworkers.