The following article discusses the history and triumphant purchase of a "bottle float" card by author Cary E. Johnson. The article was submitted by APS Chapter Peninsular State Philatelic Society as an Article of Distinction for 2025 and originally appeared in the Spring 2024 PSPS Newsletter.
To learn more about Peninsular State Philatelic Society, click here.
To read other Articles of Distinction, click here.
Postal History Makes Social History: The Bottle Float, Part Two
by Cary E. Johnson
History repeated itself after nearly 40 years when the card shown below resurfaced at the GASS in Cleveland. Several PSPS members will no doubt recognize it as it was under the plexiglass of good friend and postal history dealer Dwight Wahr, who, along with his wife, came from Hingham, Massachusetts, to both the Ann Arbor and Plymouth Shows for many years. His sister lived in Saline, and he had ties to Ann Arbor as well in that his great uncle had a book and stationery store on State Street in the early 1900s and lived in the Wahr house on Ann St., which is a very famous Greek Revival historic house now occupied by a friend of mine. His name, Geo. Wahr, can be found on numerous Ann Arbor picture postcards. We also saw Dwight each year at the March Party Show in Cleveland. His was the first table that many of us looked for when the show opened since he always brought new Michigan postal history material. At the Plymouth Show, this card first appeared but the firm price ($750.00) was just too dear for even the die-hards amongst us, so it remained unsold under the plexiglass to be viewed only from afar.
Sadly, Dwight had a slip and fall accident and passed away in 2018. One of Dwight's good friends, who often shared a table with him at the March Party Show, brought some of Dwight's inventory to the recent Cleveland GASS and sold some of them to a bourse dealer. As luck would have it, I stopped at that dealer's table not long after the transaction and asked to see Michigan covers. Low and behold, this card was among the group. What are the chances as I quickly got my checkbook out!
The amazing postal and social history story told by this card (unrelated to the perfect CDS and star killer from Saugatuck) began with my attendance at a Chicago stamp show in 1985. I sat at the table of Chicago area dealer, Barbara Wallace, who always had interesting Michigan postal history items available in her stock. She handed me a Bottle Float card (#69) and briefly told me the story which she had authored, "The Great Lake Michigan Bottle Express" in The Chronicle, Vol. 33 (109), 1981, of the U.S. Philatelic Classic Society. I wrote a recap of the story in the PP (Winter 1985), and that bottle and card were found on the beach in Holland, Michigan, on October 13, 1886.
These cards were placed in bottles, sealed, and dropped into Lake Michigan from the Chicago water-intake crib located about two miles off shore by the Drainage and Water Supply Commission in hopes of mapping the water flow patterns. Ms. Wallace had acquired 16 cards, 9 of which were returned from Michigan towns including Muskegon, Covert, Holland, and Saugatuck (see map). The float numbers noted ranged from #5 to #69, mailed between August and November of 1886; however, the total number of bottles placed in the lake during the experiment is unknown. The Holland origin card was the only one Wallace still had so the others were previously sold or kept in her collection. The Bottle Float finders were paid a reward (amount unknown but noted in red pen on the reverse left side of the cards) for simply returning the government postal cards by mail with the requested data provided.
So, what was the social story behind the Bottle Float Experiment? After the Civil War, the industrial age and the rapid population growth of Chicago with large waste-producing beef and pork processing plants and associated stock yards caused the city to rapidly outgrow its sewage disposal system which was simply to send everything into the Chicago River and directly into Lake Michigan. By the 1880s, it was alarmingly apparent that the city's lake water supply could be easily contaminated by raw sewage based on the increasing number of cases of cholera and typhoid, especially after flooding rain storms. The Bottle Float Experiment proved this concern in that some of the float bottles drifted to the shore in Chicago demonstrating a flow pattern that could easily allow contamination of the water intake crib.
Certainly, the shoreline communities in western Michigan that also obtained their water supply from Lake Michigan (see map: Muskegon, Covert, and Saugatuck shown by red dots) could also be affected by the increasing sewage outflow from Chicago. The proposed solution was to attempt to reverse the flow of the Chicago River by building a 28-mile Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal to connect the Chicago River to the Des Plaines River and eventually southwest into the Illinois and Mississippi Rivers. Building began in 1892 and when opened in early 1900, the canal filled with water and flowed as planned since the canal had a lower elevation than the Chicago River based on the topography of the area and therefore, the water flow of the river was reversed. Locks were installed to tightly control the amount of water outflow from Lake Michigan and ships could also more easily travel down river to the Illinois and Mississippi Rivers. It was assumed that dilution of the sewage water would negate potential problems downstream; however, with heavy rains, flooding occurred into farmer's fields and into shoreline towns such that lawsuits mounted. Some were settled and many were dismissed. Finally, the Illinois Supreme Court forced the city to build an effective sewage and water treatment plant in the early 1920s to signifiqantly reduce river water contamination.
The data provided by the Bottle Float Experiment along with other factors helped persuade the Water Commission to undertake the building of the Sanitary Canal to divert the disease-producing·sewage-filled Chicago River away from the city's water supply intake system in Lake Michigan. This engineering success no doubt saved an enormous number of lives and allowed one of the greatest cities in America to grow and prosper for the price of a few penny postal cards!
One question I know is hanging in the air: "What was the GASS dealer's asking price?" Happily, the purchase price was "significantly less" than Dwight was asking back in the day and perhaps both dealers did not see Dwight's very small, penciled price notation. The final sale price was certainly based on the GASS dealer's purchase price. No doubt he added a significant markup considering the dealer table prices at the show. However, the price was determined. Life is good when something presumably lost or sold suddenly shows up again with perfect timing!
As a final note about my back-and-forth discussion with my good friend Ted Bahry at the Cleveland GASS show, "It's a Shield, Ted!"