Friday, June 28, 2019

Spring's Mayflies are a Good Sign



Recently, some mayflies once again appeared in Lake Erie’s western basin. Sometimes called Canadian soldiers, shad flies, fish flies, or June bugs, these harmless insects are official known to scientists as Hexagenia. They live most of their lives in burrows in Lake Erie’s soft bottom. From late May to late August, whenever the water temperature is just right, they emerge, molt, swarm, mate, lay eggs, and die - all within 48 hours!




Their reappearance signals a healthier Lake Erie. While it’s great for the perch and channel catfish, it’s not so great for tourism. In fact, the size of the hatch in June 1996 caught residents of Port Clinton and other shoreline communities off guard. Suddenly mayflies were everywhere - covering everything! Picnic tables, cars, boats, porches, docks, sidewalks, and streets were piled high with them.


Attracted to bright lights, mayflies swarmed at an electrical substation near Lake Erie. They were so numerous that they began conducting electricity across insulators, causing brownouts throughout Northwest Ohio. When streets became dangerously slick with their smelly little carcasses, city workers posted warning signs, then rolled out the plows and scooped up 38 dump-truck loads!

The hatch of 1996 may have seemed large, but it was small when compared to the hatch that occurred on the evening of July 22, 1951. The following morning biologists at the Stone Laboratory on Gibraltar Island began making some calculations. They rated the density of mayflies on lawns at Put-in-Bay as 2,650 mayflies per square foot. Twelve bushels, weighing 38 pounds each, were scooped up from behind a single window of the laboratory. One pound was found to contain 8,100 mayflies. Therefore, the single pile was estimated to contain 2,380,000 mayflies. According to Dr. Thomas H. Langlois’ report, much larger swarms had accumulated around two lampposts on Middle Bass Island on the same night. He estimated conservatively that two tons or 32,400,000 mayflies lay under each lamp post! This quantity had emerged from only 50 acres of Lake Erie’s bottom.


Franz Theodore Stone Laboratory
Gibraltar Island, Lake Erie

The following year, mayflies met with disaster. By the mid-60s, they had disappeared from Lake Erie. Excessive algae growth resulting from high levels of phosphorous in the water hastened the rate of decay, consuming so much oxygen at the lake bottom that the mayflies could not survive. Little did we know that the ever-present green scum and rotting masses of algae could virtually destroy tons and tons of mayflies that had been part of Lake Erie’s ecosystem for thousands of years. So, when those pesky mayflies descend, TRY to give thanks for a healthy Lake Erie.
           

Monday, June 3, 2019

President Rutherford B. Hayes' 1878 Journey to Minnesota and Dakota Territory


                                                                   
President Rutherford B. Hayes and First Lady Lucy Hayes and their presidential entourage in Dakota Territory, 1878

Guest Post by
Vince Godon  
Several years ago, I came across a story about President Rutherford B. Hayes visiting the Oliver Dalrymple bonanza farm near Casselton, Dakota Territory (now North Dakota) in 1878. At the time, I was writing a book (Reshaping the Tornado Belt: The June 16, 1887, Grand Forks/East Grand Forks Tornado) about a tornado that struck the city where I live and work. A president visiting a small territory back in 1878 was a big thing, so I thought there may be some photographs taken of the trip. Needless to say, when I found that the Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Library and Museums had a photograph of the occasion, I was thrilled. I received permission from the Hayes Presidential Libary and Museums to use the photograph in my book, which included a generic section on bonanza farms. Since I was not looking into why President Hayes was visiting Dakota Territory, it ended my research into that topic.

I love history, architecture, historical brickmaking, and live in the Upper Midwest. For those reasons, I also maintain a website called Minnesota Bricks (www.mnbricks.com). On this website, I have compiled information on Minnesota brickyards, brick manufacturers, and historical buildings. When conducting research into these topics, I constantly come across other interesting information. For those of you who love history, you know how easy it is to get off track. Rather than discard these other interesting stories, I decided to combine my love of history with my expertise in making videos. I have made nearly a dozen historical YouTube videos to date, mainly about Minnesota history.

Recently, I came across a story that mentioned President Rutherford B. Hayes had visited the Minnesota State Fair. Again, I knew that a state fair getting a presidential visit would have been a big thing. Then I noticed that the year of the visit was 1878. I remembered my earlier story about Hayes visiting the bonanza farm in 1878, and was hooked. Coming across the same story twice makes you feel like you were meant to research a topic. The result was learning many interesting things about 1878, President Hayes, Minneapolis and St. Paul, and the Minnesota State Fair. Rather than trying to explain them all here, check out my historical video at: