Laura Trabka

Lansing State Journal

Winter in Michigan in the 1930s was rough.

Uploaded to YouTube on Feb. 1, the video titled “Winter Comes to Michigan” helps offer a glimpse into what it was like to keep the roads clear more than 80 years ago. At least, that’s how it looks in a recent video shared by the Michigan Department of Transportation.

The video opens with a forward saying, “Winter maintenance is a gigantic task for heroic men and efficient machines. It is a public service fraught with grave responsibilities.”

But it also features some of the fun, with scenes of ice skating, skiing and sledding.

According to the YouTube page, MDOT said the newsreel was “recently discovered by sisters Nancy and Barbara Sleeper of Newberry, whose grandfather, Sanborn Sleeper, was the superintendent of the Luce County Road Commission from 1928 until sometime around World War II.”

MDOT added that the family donated the film to show the time when future Gov. Murray Van Wagoner ran the Michigan State Highway Department from 1933 to 1940.

Watch it here: