Michigan Conservation Commission Beaver Island Cottontail Rabbit Closure Order, 1952

Summary

The September 5, 1952 Charlevoix County Herald printed a State of Michigan Conservation Commission order signed and ordered published on July 10, 1952. It made it unlawful to take or attempt to take cottontail rabbits on Beaver Island, Charlevoix County, for one year from October 1, 1952.¹

The order names Harold W. Glassen as chairman, F. P. Struhsaker as secretary, and Gerald E. Eddy as Director of Conservation in the countersignature.¹ It supplies a formal regulatory boundary for the cottontail-rabbit stocking history reported retrospectively in 1951 and for the closed rabbit season described in the 1950 account.

Authority and same-day orders

The order states its authority as “Act 230, P.A. 1925, as amended” — the Michigan statute under which the Conservation Commission issued its game orders. The same page of the September 5, 1952 Herald prints two other Commission orders signed and ordered published the same day, July 10, 1952, under the same statutory authority and bearing the same officers’ signatures: an amendment to a 1951 raccoon-trapping order covering Zones 2 and 3 of the Lower Peninsula, and a sharp-tailed-grouse-and-prairie-chicken order covering the Lower Peninsula generally, with a partial open season in six named counties.¹ Unlike those two, the cottontail order names a single place — Beaver Island, Charlevoix County — rather than a zone or region, placing it alongside the 1938 deer and 1941 sharp-tailed-grouse orders as one of a small number of Commission orders this knowledge base holds that single out Beaver Island by name rather than regulating it as part of a larger zone.

The order’s one-year closure, beginning October 1, 1952, follows by about two years the cottontail-rabbit planting that the November 1951 Herald retrospective dates to 1950 as part of the Game Club’s stocking program. The timing is consistent with a closure meant to protect a recently stocked population, but the held sources do not state that connection explicitly, and this article does not assert a causal link the record does not make.

The order text was printed identically in the Herald’s September 5 and September 12, 1952 issues, consistent with the standard practice, seen elsewhere on the same page, of running a legal notice for multiple consecutive weeks.¹

Evidence and limits

The issuance date is July 10, 1952, while October 1, 1952 is the stated effective date. The held newspaper does not provide the original order, the investigation behind it, or a precise expiration-day convention for the one-year period.

Read the document

8 pages, rendered from the held scan.

All 8 pages

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Added 1 August 2026 · revised 3 August 2026. Recent changes