Iron Mountain car plunge revives Mich. town's tradition

John Carlisle | Detroit Free Press

IRON MOUNTAIN, Mich. — Some people look at the town's flooded old iron mine and see a frozen roadside lake. Jeff DeRidder sees a great place to park a car and take bets on when it's going to fall through the ice.

DeRidder, 75, is a longtime member of the Rotary Club of Iron Mountain-Kingsford, where fund-raisers like auctions and pancake breakfasts had grown stale. They needed something new, something attention-getting, to help pay for their projects and scholarships.

He remembered that when he was a kid growing up here, local civic groups parked a car every year on the ice above the flooded iron mine and took wagers around town on the exact date and time the ice would give way when the weather warmed up, sending the car plunging a hundred feet or so to the bottom. It was a long-standing wintertime amusement, but it fizzled out about four decades ago.

Yet it was so unique that nobody ever forgot it.

"Older people still remember it," said Jayna Huotari, the 45-year-old secretary of the Rotary Club. "My mother remembers my grandfather losing by two hours one year."

DeRidder set out to bring this peculiar Iron Mountain tradition back.

They got a car from a local guy whose wife wanted his 1998 Saturn beater out of their driveway. The kids at the local vocational school gave the car a bright orange paint job that could be seen by traffic on the road. A local company donated high-tech gear to record the exact moment of the plunge and show it on webcam.

Now, once again, there's an old car parked haplessly on the ice, waiting for the weather to send it to its fate and for a lucky gambler to win $1,000 by guessing when it happens.

The entry forms for the Rotary Club Car Plunge Contest are all over town — at the grocery stores, banks, the Chamber of Commerce offices and particularly the town's bars, where organizers expect the most enthusiastic wagering to take place. Then, as now, the brilliance of this idea becomes more apparent after a few drinks.

"You get enough liquor in people, they'll bet on anything," Huotari joked.

DeRidder laughed in agreement. "That's one of the things you learn about the Upper Peninsula," he said.

A TRADITION IS BORN

The two lakes on either side of U.S. Highway 2 are what's left of the Chapin Mine, once one of the biggest iron mines in the world. It began in 1879 with the discovery of massive iron deposits that were big enough to merit giving the name Iron Mountain to the town that grew above it, and vast enough to bring more than 28 million pounds of iron to the surface before it closed in 1934 after the Great Depression hit.

Over the years, its abandoned pits gradually filled with groundwater and rain, creating a lake that's hundreds of feet deep in spots.

The main highway passes between the two pits, and actually collapsed into the mine 75 years ago, taking four parked cars and a truck with it. Nobody was hurt.

Back in the 1940s, civic groups like the Knights of Pythias and the Lions Club realized how incredibly satisfying it would be to put a car on top of the ice on the lake and wager when it'd crash through. The yearly tradition lasted for decades.

Back then, they'd rig one end of a rope to the car and wrap the other end around the electric cord of a wall clock at the adjacent gas station. When the car sank, it unplugged the clock, freezing in time the moment the car broke through.

"It was really interesting," said 64-year-old Jeanne Gardipee, who lives in the nearby town of Norway. "We only went to town on Fridays with my stepfather and mother, and we'd be sitting in the backseat of the Buick looking out over the top to see if it had gone down yet. It was the coolest thing."

In those days, the rules were looser. Once the car fell through the ice, people pretty much just let it sink. Now there are a couple dozen old vehicles stacked at the bottom, along with trees, mine debris and whatever else anyone felt like dumping there over the years.

But things are different now, and you can't dump old cars in lakes anymore. So the students at the Dickinson-Iron Technical Center drained all the fluids, took out the engine and transmission, and tethered it by cable to a tree on the shore so it can be easily fished out.

There were other considerations, too. The Rotary Club had to buy liability insurance for the stunt. They had to get a permit from the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality to let it sink, even though they're pulling it back out shortly after. They sought and got approval from the City Council.

All that's left now is to wait for spring to arrive here, where winter's air is bitter, where stubborn sheets of ice glaze parking lots and gas stations throughout the season, and hard-crusted snow keeps the landscape in hibernation.

"I'm very excited about it," said DeRidder, who remembers seeing a car parked on the ice as a child riding in his father's car. "And we hope people will be excited because so many people drive past the vehicle every day."

ANYONE CAN WAGER

Betting isn't limited to Iron Mountain residents. Anyone's welcome to play, though Huotari said the club's webpage doesn't allow for online entries yet. Out-of-towners would have to have a form mailed to them, which they can fill out and return with $5 and their best guess. No matter where they're from, whoever gets closest to the actual date and time wins.

The contest has led to fervent speculation and guesswork around this town of 7,600. Bruce Orttenburger, the 63-year-old president of the Rotary Club, printed out for himself a color-coded chart of thaw dates for cities in Minnesota at roughly the same latitude as Iron Mountain, hoping to extrapolate a likely thaw date from there. "I have a different, unscientific method," he admitted. He's wagering on April 10.

It might take a while for someone to win the bet. The car weighs only about 1,800 pounds after its engine and transmission were taken out. The east pit where it's parked is smothered in cooling shade most of the time. And the ice it sits on is at least a foot thick right now, said DeRidder. He's guessing May 7.

Club members say that even before the first bets were placed, the idea has been a success. It has given local students a chance to practice their skills working on a car and get their picture in the local paper. It has reignited a lot of memories and sparked conversations around town. It has brought back an old Iron Mountain tradition.

Above all, they say, it's something that makes the best of the area's harsh winter climate while helping a good cause.

"It'll keep us occupied," said Huotari. She's picking April 26. "We have to make our own entertainment up here."