Looking Back: Studs, Cleats May Be Damaging Island's M-185

This article was featured in The Republican-News and St. Ignace Enterprise September 2, 1971. It discusses the changing technology of horse shoes and its effect on Mackinac Island roadways.

Tungsten carbide, the winter scourge of Michigan highways in the form of studded tires, has been fingered as the new summer scourge of roadways on Michigan's famed Mackinac Island, which has never seen a studded tire. The muffled clippity clop of the Island's 1,000- horse population gave way this summer to a harsher CLIPPITYCLOP as traditional hard-rubber horse shoes were replaced by new metal shoes.

Lying between Michigan's Upper Peninsula and Lower Peninsula in the Straits of Mackinac, the six-square mile island is a plush mecca for tourists and summer residents. With motor vehicles banned from the Island, transportation is provided primarily by horsedrawn carriages and bicycles.

The Department of State Highways maintains M-185, an eight-mile asphalt roadway around the Island's perimeter. Highway maintenance personnel became alarmed recently when damage started showing up on M-185's asphalt surface. Other roadways are showing even more severe damage.

Preliminary investigation indicates that the Island's longtime ban against metal horse shoes was repealed a year ago. Farriers began replacing the hard-rubber shoes with longerlasting metal shoes. The Highway Department's Testing and Research Division has determined that the new shoe cleats contain tungsten carbide, hardest of all known metals.

Tungsten carbide studs, imbedded in tires, made their appearance on Michigan's highways in 1966. Although legal only from November though April, studded tires have been determined to be rutting asphalt and concrete highways throughout the state.

The Highway Department estimates that at the present rate of damage blamed on studded tires, it will soon take $28 mil- lion annually to repair that damage.

The Department joined by State Police and the Michigan Good Roads Federation, has asked the Legislature to ban studded tires in Michigan.

The Department intends to keep a closer watch on Mackinac Island's M-185 to determine whether damage will justify a change in material used in horse shoes.

The Department just may find willing allies in long-time summer residents who yearn for the softer clippity-clop of yesteryears.