Oil embargo grounds Bob-Lo steamers
The Arab oil embargo was starting to take a toll not just on automobiles, but on boats. The Columbia and Ste. Claire Bob-Lo boats saw their travel schedules noticeably curtailed, which caused attendance at the park to drop. The park had a particularly bad year from a financial standpoint in 1979, compounded by the fact that steamship excursions were curtailed from Wyandotte due to a lack of quality parking near Bishop Park. So after 30 years of ownership, Todd H. Browning would sell Bob-Lo amusement park and the boats to Cambridge Properties of Kentucky.
Rockwood sidesteps prison plan
Rockwood residents may have had good reason to be alarmed in the spring of 1979, and State Senator James DeSana took notice. In May, he wrote a letter to Michigan Governor William Milliken asking him to stop the proposed construction of a 550-cell prison planned for Rockwood.
The Michigan State Department of Corrections was interested in a 120-acre purchase of land, of which forty acres would be for the prison, while eighty acres would be sold by the D of C. The drain on the tax base would have been two fold: A prison – since it is on exempt state land – does not pay taxes, and there would be an obvious fear for potential businesses to locate or build near a prison site.
As a result, residential tax rates would have to rise to make up for the potential loss. In his letter, DeSana mentioned the Upper Peninsula community of Kinross as an alternative home for the prison. Kinross already had a medium-security facility operational, while making it known they would welcome the new project.
Clark Tank fire forces 5,000 to flee
A petroleum storage tank with a 1.2 million gallon capacity went up with two explosions at the Clark Tank Farm on Ecorse west of Telegraph on December 15, 1979, forcing the evacuation of over 5,000 neighborhood residents into the late autumn cold.
Flames from the explosion threatened mobile homes in the nearby Robinwood Trailer Park in Taylor, and in fact an undetermined number of them were destroyed. Fortunately, there were no deaths and only one minor injury from the incident.
The first explosion occurred around 3:00 AM and was visible from downtown Detroit. The next explosion, though not as fierce, occurred over seven hours later and hampered firefighter efforts to keep the blaze and hot spots under control.
Though the cause was not officially determined at the scene, it was suggested that the exploded tank had been overfilled with petroleum, with a resulting surface vapor cloud trailing off to the trailer park area. Something as simple as lighting a stove could have taken flames along the invisible vapor cloud, toward the tank.
A sidenote was that looting was a major problem following these incident, as it was reported various youths began breaking into the homes and taking “anything they could find.” A total of nine ended up in police custody, six directly tied to the thieveries.
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