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Colleen Janeczek and Roxanne Dean walk through the old Lobdell-Emery Administration building in Onaway, Michigan, dreaming of the future. Cracks in the plaster creep throughout the walls, dust is spread across outdated carpet and old furniture lay abandoned from years past.
Janeczek and Dean are both members of the Onaway Historical Museum, heading a project to renovate the rundown building back into its original state.
“So our goal is to, once we get this renovated, to move some of our exhibits there,” Dean said. “[We’ll] move our steering wheels and all the other displays that we have pertaining to the American Wood Rim factory.”
The building once housed the offices for the people that ran the world’s largest steering wheel factory called the American Wood Rim Company. It’s the only building that’s left. At the turn of the century, nearly half of Onaway’s 4,000 residents worked at the factory before it was engulfed in flames in 1926.
125 years later, the small town with just under 700 people stands on the remnants. Its slogan is still “Onaway Steers the World.”
The American Wood Rim Company was owned by E.J. Lobdell, a man who manufactured bike parts, saddles and wheels in Marietta, Ohio. Onaway historian, Newt Chapman, said Lobdell moved to Onaway in 1901 for the lumber. This was when he was inspired to make steering wheels for the cars being built in Detroit.
Months before he came, the Alpena lumbering company The Huron Handle accepted an invitation from Onaway founding father Merrit Chandler to come up to Onaway in 1901. After settling down and starting the project to make the Northern Michigan Railroad, Lobdell bought Huron Handle Company in August of the same year.
Chapman said the American Wood Rim Company consolidated four different companies which included Huron Handle and three other wood rim manufacturer plants.
The factory grew in its early years. With partnership with Huron Handle, the factory was not only making steering wheels, but also bike wheels and rims, hangers and broom handles.
The company went on to sell steering wheels to most of the major companies including Packard, Cadillac, Oldsmobile and more.
According to the Historical Society of Michigan, Onaway even owned 22 patents from the way the wood was mended together to create the wheel to their very own tilt steering wheel design, which allowed users to move the steering wheel up when getting into the car.
But all of that came crashing down on the morning of Thursday, January 14, 1926 when a fire broke out in one of the sanding machines. The fire ended up spreading to the rest of the factory, engulfing every wooden piece into flames and killing four workers. Everything from the factory, to the lumber yards were destroyed.
After the fire, the company decided they would move their company to Alma, and invited their workers to go with them. They ended up being known as the Lobdell-Emery Manufacturing Company. Citizens ended up moving away, leaving the rest of the town in shambles.
“It kind of, I hate to say, but the fire destroyed the town, not just the factory. I mean the whole town took a hit, the restaurants, the bars, everything,” Janeczek said.
ALPENA HISTORY
Sixty miles south of Onaway, Alpena was also trying to make a name for themselves in the auto industry, like many small towns across northern Michigan in the early 20th century.
The Alpena Motor Car Company only lasted four years, but within those years, their car, the Alpena Flyer, was sold across the nation.
AMCC president Daniel Hanover and a board of directors created the company on June 15, 2010. The company received its manufacturing equipment from the closed down Mt. Clemens Wolverine Motor Car Company, according to The News. Its factory was at what is now the Besser World Head Quarters.
The prototype was created by William C. French.
“They built the first prototype, and that was done in his machine shop, and then he kind of stuck around as like a local legend here in Alpena,” Sarah Honeycutt, the collections manager at the Besser Museum said.
Honeycutt said when business started rolling in November of 1910, it was projected that 2,500 cars would be made yearly.
Several models were created, each only in a royal blue color. Some of the models included the Model J, a car that accommodated four passengers and the Model G, a roadster, which was an open two-seat car. The prices ranged from $1,450 to $1,600. Today, those prices would have been around $48,100 to $53,100, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
“They did sell these cars nationally,” Honeycutt said. “They did actually end up going to the New York City Car Show, and it was recognized as one of the best ten cars in the world.”
But, the company only produced 500 cars by 1913. By 1914, everything stopped.
According to The News, the North American Vehicle Company sued the Alpena Motor Car Company for using its three-point suspension design. The company offered a $450,000 settlement, according to Motor Cities Heritage Area.
The company declared bankruptcy by February 1914.
The last known remaining Alpena Flyer sits in the Besser Museum for Northeast Michigan.
