Way back when the Pasty Cam began (March of '98), on its third day as a regular feature, we showed the Delaware Mine tour sign on the old Phillips 66 building north of Kearsarge. The very first request I recall receiving by email was for a picture of the Phillipsville sign. Four and a half years later, Michelle Wilson delivers.

I met Michelle at a Lighthouse Celebration committee meeting at the Daily Mining Gazette this summer. Can't recall how we got on the topic of this old gas station, but she found a photo she took back in 1974 on a family vacation to visit her grandma, who lived at Phillipsville.

Does anyone remember when this was in operation?

I can remember having an ice cream cone there while waiting for a bus. That would have been around 1943 or 44. Gee Whiz I'm getting old. Don't know when it closed. I wasn't living around here then.

hey i walk my dog to that building every day!!! lol that is so weird seeing it in a picture for the first time. you should see the heads turn when i walk my great dane up and down the road!! it is so fun.

I think Gordon Kauppila was the last one to run that gas station. Back in the 50's

Since I have started working again, sometimes I have to visit Pasty.com just once a week and catch up. This was the case today and I was reading about Fayette. Then I remembered I was supposed to be looking for the book, small paperback, green, I think, about the Fayette site. Can anyone help me locate some copies? My cousin, Leo Pat Popour, showed it to me when I was in Manistique this summer. It seems there are pictures of the Duquette's in there, husband and wife. They are my paternal grandmother's parents. I think her name was Octavia. Grandma was Alexanderine Octavia Duqette Davis. This is what Grandpa Davis used to say about his wife: "Old Lady Duquette, She came from Fayette, and if it wasn't for me she'd be living there yet."

I remember it having pumps there in the early '50s. It was a Phillips 66 station. I won't swear that it was running tho. Maybe the name of the location came from that. The Last Place On Earth was a tavern then, and there was an empty building across the highway from it. It was a high building, so it was something other than a house.

Originally named after the Phillips Family,
PS Hello Michelle............

wasnt there a lumber yard just down from the station in philpsville in later years.was it in an old store.i remember the pumps at the gas station.did a famiy named o brian run the grocery store years ago.

I remember grandpa stopping in Phillipsville for gas in the late 40's. I also believe it closed in the early 50's. Also remember the tall building across the road from Phillipsville. Think about it every time we are up there and pass the area. I thought it was a house long abandoned but am not sure.

Does anybody remember when the Jampot Pot was a little restuarant that you could get ice cream, pop, chips (Red Dot, the best I ever had) and campfire marshmallows that were 12 in a box? The place was owned by the Dows and they rented the three little cabins that are now part of the monks complex.

Heavy snow falling at the moment here in the Keweenaw. We receive so many pictures from all over these days, we have become lazy for taking some ourselves. Where did I put that Pasty Cam?

gasoline was 5 gallons for a dollar here in 1937! DB

Hey, neat! Today's pic is not far from the subject of my new web page.:) I just put up a page based on a historical paper I did on Ahmeek last year. It's nothing spectacular to look at, but the text itself earned an A in the class, so I guess it's pretty informative.:) You can find the link to it at the following address.
http://www.geocities.com/rjgoniea/index.html
Feedback is always welcome.

I lived in Phillipsville in the 40's and 50's, along with Eva Tossava, the Delongchamps, Gaabos and Kivelas. The Slaughterhouse creek runs through. Also the Last Place on Earth (Antiques) was a tavern on 41 and the grocery store was on the main highway. The gas station was open at that time. You could easily walk on a back road to Allouez and walk up to the Wolverine ball diamond. Good Memories..

The tavern down the hill was owned by Edna Ausloos.( i cheated and looked in an old 1955
telephone book).I belive it was just known as
Edna's.
Lee

Is this the Phillips 66 gas station on
US 41 just south of Ahmeek? It's been
awhile for me.

Charlie, If you all blow really hard, maybe you can blow some of that snow to Frederick, Maryland near Washington, D.C. That way, we won't have to go to work, because no one south of the Mason Dixon line knows how to shovel, let alone drive in the white stuff! Hope you find your camera soon. We'd love a snow picture. It would be the next best thing! When people ask where I grew up and I tell them Michigan, they look horrified and say, "It's really cold up there, isn't it." I just smile and say, "It sure is!"

i'm not sure, but i think that my uncles, frank and shadow kowalski ran the gas station also in the 50's

Hallelujah, Michelle and Charlie! I've requested(more than once) and patiently waited for this picture to appear ever since I first discovered Pasty Cam a couple years ago.
And to get it in B&W only makes it that much more special!

The Phillipsville gas station was started about 1946 by Tony Abe from Copper City. It was a thriving business for many years. Tony also worked in the mines and had a lot of friends who bought their gas there. I remember one of his customers who stopped in once a week to buy a couple gallons of gas and then had Tony check the oil level, water level and the air pressure in every tire. You got service in those days.

The store down the hill was owned by the Nordstroms. It was a grocery store and they delivered to Allouez, Copper City and Ahmeek. I would ride in the truck when it came by. The family moved to Southern California and became active in organizing the Copper Country Reunions there every year.

There was a tall building across the highway where some people lived but originally was probably a store.

Along the little stream on that side of the highway were two old buildings. Some old people lived in one and the other housed their sheep. I imagine they were Basque people and I always looked for the sheep as we rode by.

Originally, on top of the hill near the site of the gas station there was a large general store. It burned to the ground one night in the mid 30s. All that remained was the foundation and a very large safe that was built into the building. The school house was at the to of the next hill.

I remember when the Phillipsville gas station was open. Must've been in the early 50s. I remember the pumps and cars and people being there. After it closed, me and a friend sorta dreamed about opening it up again. Wish we could've, but.. Hey, Joey, what ever happened?

A friend of my mother's named Edna (and I
was always told her last name was Phillips)
ran the bar. I remember her from the fifties,
she was a tiny woman, but apparently could
be ferocious with the miners who got out of
hand in the bar. Rumor had it that they would
be slipped a mickey and wake up the next
morning in one of the cabins out back, minus
the money in their pockets ( call it room rental,
I guess). She had some Irish blood in her and
sang most beautifully with a very clear voice.
One of her two sisters, whose names were
Bessie and Winnie, was, from the writing on a
post card addressed to one of my mother's
uncles, sweet on him sometime in the 1910s.
The "house" across the road was, I believe,
run as a " hafway house" by their father or
grandfather. A halfway house was an inn at a
point which was a days carriage or wagon ride
from the last inn, thereby providing lodging
and food for the passengers. In this case, I
presume it was halfway between Hancock
and Copper Harbor.
I may be off the mark in some of this, so if
anyone can add to it or correct it, go for it.

i love those old 50's cars. old cars are great. i love the 70's better bigger, and more powerful. i wish i was around back then.

In think in recent history, Tom Poynter (or his brother) owned the Phillipsville station. That would make sense, given the large ad for the Deleware Mine on the side of the building. Maybe he could shed (no pun intended) more light on the buildings history, although you've done a great job, Bill.

And Charlie, we'd like to see pictures of the white stuff, but, please, DO NOT send any of it to California! My garden is still blooming quite nicely and I'd like to keep it that way as long as I can!

Does anyone remember an old gent who lived on that stretch of US-41, kept sheep, and used to walk around Calumet pushing a two wheeled cart. His name (and I'm guessing on the spelling) was Christo Balladingo (sorry, but that's my best shot). He didn't dress very well and we all were afraid of him and, I am ashamed to admit, were not very nice to him. He passed from the scene in the late 50's or early 60's.

I wonder if he was one of the Basques someone mentioned earlier. I know that the Calumet area was a melting pot, but I never realized that Basques had immigrated there along with all of the other nationalities.

Every summer when we drive to the Keweenaw I look for his house and remember another time.

dlp, The gent you refer to lived in Kearsarge (Wolverine location). I don't remember him having sheep. We called him Ballading and, yes, he took a lot of teasing from the kids. Rumor has it he was seen as far away as Marquette with his cart. There was a woman just below the Phillipsville hill who kept sheep. You could see them from the highway.

i remember bessie phillps.she drove a model t or ford in those years.i can remember her driving by in her car.i think she lived in eagle river.

I remember the sheep down the hill from Phillipsville. Always looked forward to seeing them on the way to the camp at Sand Bay. Think about them every time I pass thru the area. Such great memories!

Ballading & his cart, Bessie Phillips & her Model T, for some reason I thought it was a pickup, I remember them well. These truly are great memories, and how rich we truly are because of them. Only in the Keweenaw!!!

Nordstroms store at bottom of the hill was a cloverland store if I remember right.

Christo Ballading lived in a house in the area right behind the Hut in Kearsarge. It was always said that he had a car about 1930 vintage in his garage that had only the mileage from the dealer in Calumet to his garage registered on the odometer. Actually he was a nice man but different. He was from Italy.

The store behind the Phillipsville gas station was owned by my grandfather, Charles Tossava, and his partner, Peter Gaabo. It was called the Kearsarge Store and it did burn down. There was also a stable there. I had always heard that the building across US 41 from the antique store was also a tavern (or combination half-way station) run by a couple of the Phillips women. And, yes, Nordstrom's store is just north of the current antique store (also a former tavern).
I used to buy gum at the gas station when I was little. I have seen pictures of my mom as a young woman in front of the then Flying A/Texaco sign.

Ballading's name was John Roncaglione. All the kids in the towns he pulled his wagon thru used to tease him. He had cows 'til they closed the Stella Cheese factory in Baltic. The Copper Country Dairy wouldn't take his milk because he used to wash his milk bucket in the little creek behind his house. He was always looking for things that he could pick up and sell. He used to sell his scrap iron to Klatzky Bros. They were that era's version of Superior Crafts. His house was remodeled down into that white house that's the 2nd one down from the corner on the east side of the street that's behind the one behind the Hut. The sheepherder lady's name was Ilona. I don't remember the last name. I don't know if there was a man there too. Bessie Phillips did drive a Model T. She must have worked in Calumet or Laurium becasue I remember her going home in the evenings. That car was noisy.

and remember a John Silva that lived next to Ballading? Can remember stopping there as a kid on the way to Bete Gris.

Silva's house doesn't look the same these days either. It's been remodeled a lot. Bill P. Do you remember that there were 2 schools in Kearsarge? The one you mentioned that you could see from Phillpsville, and another one on Smith Ave. going toward Mayflower and Trap Rock Valley.

Remember this place so well - going from Laurium to our cottage at 5 mile point. Also look for it every time I get back to the U.P. The Last place on Earth also brings a smile with the "shut" sign - instead of closed. Didn't know there was a U.P. reunion in So. California every year. How can I get more info?? Keep up the good work Pasty cam. I do enjoy!!!!

Been there, Done that! My Uncle Bill Kivela was the last to operate the gas station in Philipsville (1956 era). As a kid, I also delivered groceries to Allouez and Bumbletown for the Nordstroms and I enjoyed having a beer at Edna's

i remember the dow cabins.it was closed for many years until the jampot took over.do those priests live there year around.how did they ever get settled up there.what made them think to sell jams,breads.cookies.good luck to them.

THEY DON'T MAKE PAINT LIKE THEY USED TO. I PAINTED THAT SIGN 15 YEARS AGO. DAN BELO

I had forgotten about the second school in Kearsarge. Do you remember that the area between where the stone boat is to the location where the Hut is was called Wolverine. Had to drop the name because a town downstate had the same name.

Bessie Phillips, I believe, worked at the Daily Mining Gazette in Calumet. She loved that Model T and called it by some name that I can't remember. She bought a Model A but clipped the Eagle River bridge and put it away and went back to the Model T.

Bessie was an authority on the history of Keweenaw and wrote many interesting articles.

Bill. I asked a friend of my mother's who grew up there what the difference between Kearsarge and Wolverine was. She said east of the street car track was Wolverine with Kearsarge being on the west side. The 2 names because they were named after 2 different mining companies operating there. They all ended up being a part of C&H eventually. Railroad street there is where the street car track was. The street car station was still there, but vacant when I was a kid. The street car station in Mohawk was used as an apartment building into the '70s. It was on Union St. in Mohawk. Yes, the Wolverine downstate is bigger, so they got to keep their name. Do you remember the old ice rink over on 4th St.? That was the Wolverine Athletic Club. There was jerseys for kids that played at the Armory with Wolverine AC on them

As I remember it, Kearsarge started at the 2-rut road north of the Midway. The streetcar station in Wolverine was also used as a home. A man only known as Mike lived there. Don't know when that was torn down.

Hello Sergeant Major, ret. Ft. Detrick, MD--I'm
your cousin Michelle (Betty Kivela's daughter). If
you read this, send us an email--we'd love to hear
from you!
michelleofgllka@aol.
com

The gas station was run by Matt Brulla for a short time in 1953. I pumped gas for him for about a Month. The sheep lady was a regular customer at Edna's bar. Edna was an educated woman and i believe she used to give piano lessons. Ray L

The station was run for a short time in 1953 by Matt Brulla. I pumped gas for him for a month or so.