Michigan's Tree Tunnels

Every locale is defined by its architecture and landscape, and every landscape is a composite of artificial and natural features. (1) Rocky hills and narrow valleys may distinguish a place, but so do the stone fences wrought from those hills, and the gardens dotted about those valleys. Much of the variance between regions (at least, regions similar in topography) arises from treatment of vegetation. In eastern Monroe County, Ohio, near the Ohio River, farms tend to occupy the ridges, with the valleys left untouched; conversely, in adjoining Noble County, most clearings follow stream valleys, while the hilltops remain forested. In the Virginia Military District, patches of woodland are scattered in no particular order; in the Western Reserve, they lie at the center of sections.

Throughout rural Ohio, property boundaries are often demarcated (if they're demarcated) solely by fences, or fences overgrown with brush. Typically, roads are bordered by drainage ditches, with open fields beyond. The hedge-lined lanes of the British Isles are all but unknown in Ohio. Southern Michigan, though, can boast quite a different landscape. Note the difference between sections of Salt Creek Township, Wayne County, Ohio, and Pulaski Township, Jackson County, Michigan (depicted below). Both districts exist within the purview of the Public Land Survey System, and contain 640-acre sections subdivided into 160-acre quarter-sections. In Pulaski Township, though, the tracts are split by trees into even tinier plots.

Pulaski Township, Jackson County, Michigan.

Salt Creek Township, Wayne County, Ohio.

Greene Township, Trumbull County, Ohio. This area's farms appear to be carved from the forest.

Like Ohio's roads, many of Michigan's thoroughfares traverse open farmland. These roads, however, are scarcely open to that farmland; instead, rows of trees bound the roads, granting them the aspect of a tunnel. These "tree tunnels," I believe, must exist for a reason.

Intersection of West Sterling Road and Borden Road; Scipio Township, Hillsdale County, Michigan.

Hanover Road, looking west from its convergence with Luttenton Road; Hanover Township, Jackson County, Michigan.

East Reading Road (near South Lake Pleasant Road); Jefferson Township, Hillsdale County, Michigan.

Anderson Road, looking toward Jonesville Road; Litchfield Township, Hillsdale County, Michigan.

The Michigan counties and townships where tree-lined roads preponderate were, with few exceptions, settled by natives of New York state. The "tree tunnel," then, may be a creation favored by New Yorkers; but the state of New York (if my StreetView jaunts are any indication) contains few such features. "Tree tunnels" may function as windbreaks, or, perhaps, they exist for purely aesthetic purposes.

I searched the ever-useful Google Books database for literary references to Michigan's tree-bordered roads, and found a few. A 1906 report by the Michigan Forestry Commission laments the state's being "prey to the winds that come from the ice fields of the north," and recommends planting trees to shield crops from those winds. A lengthy article about the subject — titled "Roadside Trees Big Asset of Michigan," and written by one Linus Palmer — appeared in the February 23, 1922 edition of Michigan Roads and Forests:

One of the most valuable assets to the public highways of Michigan are the roadside trees. In a system of highways as extensive as is found in this state, every conceivable type of roadside is found, varying from the heavily wooded type to the practically barren, and between these two extremes are found many roads with rows of beautiful trees, resembling a city street. 

. . . 

The people of the state are beginning to realize the real value of roadside trees, and are becoming more and more interested in the preservation and care of what trees we have, and in the planting of more trees along our public highways.

Alas, Palmer's piece is less applicable than its title suggests. Whether the wooded roads remaining in southern Michigan predate Palmer's time, or are merely legacies of the increased interest he describes, I cannot say. In any case, the "windbreak" hypothesis seems most likely (and, in fact, would explain the curious subdivision of farms into yet smaller tracts).

1) I detest using "artificial" and "natural" in this way — setting the manmade in opposition to what exists independent of him — but our language contains no alternative.

The First Log Buildings?

According to convention, log construction was introduced to America by Scandinavian and German immigrants, who settled in the Middle Colonies after 1638. Tracing the European log house's history is a more arduous task. The question, "Who built the first log structure?" may be unanswerable. The Roman architect Vitruvius (ca. 75 – ca. 15 BC), in the second book of his Ten Books on Architecture (or De Architectura), describes the log dwellings erected by the inhabitants of Colchis, a region lying between the Black Sea and Caucasus Mountains, in present western Georgia:

The woods of the Colchi, in Pontus, furnish such abundance of timber, that they build in the following manner. Two trees are laid level on the earth, right and left, at such distance from each other as will suit the length of the trees which are to cross and connect them. On the extreme ends of these two trees are laid two other trees transversely: the space which the house will inclose is thus marked out. The four sides being thus set out, towers are raised, whose walls consist of trees laid horizontally but kept perpendicularly over each other, the alternate layers yoking the angles. The level interstices which the thickness of the trees alternately leave, is filled in with chips and mud. (1)

Were it not for his use of "Colchi" and "Pontus," Vitruvius could be detailing a standard American log house (or cabin). (Whether the Colchians — like their Western inheritors — notched or hewed the timbers they used, I can't say.) Vitruvius continues:

On a similar principle they form their roofs, except that gradually reducing the length of the trees which traverse from angle to angle, they assume a pyramidal form. They are covered with boughs and smeared over with clay; and thus after a rude fashion of vaulting, their quadrilateral roofs are formed.

Here, the Colchian method of construction diverges from later European techniques. That the Colchians could erect such roofs suggests that they treated (that is, notched or shaped) their logs. I'm scarcely an engineer, but a pyramid of round trunks, I suspect, would risk collapse.

Did log architecture truly originate in the Caucasus? Perhaps; perhaps not. Few written accounts of pre-Christian European building techniques exist, and archaeological evidence for log construction is, for obvious reasons, scanty. In any case, the Germanic tribes of northern and northeastern Europe (by the early modern period, the log house's locus) did not, during the Roman era, employ such methods. In Germania, Tacitus (ca. 56 – ca. 117) writes:

With [the Germans] in truth, is unknown even the use of mortar and of tiles. In all their structures they employ materials quite gross and unhewn, void of fashion and comeliness. Some parts they besmear with an earth so pure and resplendent, that it resembles painting and colours. They are likewise wont to scoop caves deep in the ground, and over them to lay great heaps of dung. Thither they retire for shelter in the winter, and thither convey their grain: for by such close places they mollify the rigorous and excessive cold. (2)

The Germans, then, occupied mud huts or earth-roofed cellars (Tacitus surely uses "dung" only to deride). No doubt, these buildings contained wood (if only for a roof framework), but I can't imagine they used stacked logs. In the valley of the Danube, such subterranean habitations survived into the 1880s.

I searched for a corroborating account of Colchis's log homes, but found only one (possible) reference. Strabo's Geographica, written in the first or second decade BC, mentions the abodes of the "Heptacometae," who resided just north of Colchis:

Now all these peoples who live in the mountains are utterly savage, but the Heptacometae are worse than the rest. Some also live in trees or turrets; and it was on this account that the ancients called them 'Mosynoeci,' the turrets being called 'mosyni.' (3)

Though "live in trees" may mean "live in dwellings constructed of trees," Strabo, more likely, describes simple tree houses. In the succeeding sentence, he writes, "They . . . attack wayfarers, leaping down upon them from their scaffolds."

1) From Joseph Gwilt's translation (1826); transcribed by Bill Thayer, and posted on his excellent website.
2) From Thomas Gordon's translation (1910); reproduced by Fordham University.
3) From H.L. Jones's translation (1917–1932); transcribed by Bill Thayer.