Lansing State Journal from Lansing, Michigan • Page 12

T2A Nation Lansing State Journal Monday, Sept. 1, 1986 LUDO GHZ? GQ 07(323 Navassa Island miserable, but boasts a colorful history Every vehicle in inventory is tagged with our asking price. Fill out your bid and deposit in the Shoppers box in front of our new and used car office. WE WILL CALL YOU TUESDAY TO APPROVE YOUR BID. THIS IS SOMETHING YOU HAVE ALWAYS WANTED TO DO.

IF YOU CAN'T COME SUNDAY AND MONDAY. STOP IN TUESDAY! USE THIS FORM TO SUBMIT YOUR BID 6 6 This giveaway of American territory is just another in the State Department's pattern of shrinking American presence around the world. Carl Olson MAKEMODEL COLOR STOCK NO. ASKING PRICES. YOUR BIDS Name: City: I Phone: party sailed back to Columbus.

Navassa Island guano was used as a fertilizer until large natural phosphate deposits were discovered in places like Bone Valley near Lakeland, Fla. It was such an important agricultural ingredient that Congress passed the Guano Act in 1856, allowing any U.S. citizen to "take peaceably, possess and occupy" in the name of the United States any unoccupied island with guano on it. Enter one Peter Duncan, who the very next year braved Navassa, clambered onto its drop-ping-draped landscape and planted a flag. Within seven years, the Navassa Phosphate Co.

of Baltimore had established a small company town there to mine the guano. By 1889, the workers were fed up with Navassa's conditions, and rioted, attacking their bosses and killing the mine superintendent In 1898, the mining operation ended and two years later the company went bankrupt Nobody paid much attention to Navassa until the Panama Canal was being built and the nearby Windward Passage became an important East Coast shipping lane. Woo-drow Wilson ordered a lighthouse to signal the path to the new canal. The Coast Guard began staffing the new, light in 1917, and immediately began receiving complaints from its keepers about food, supplies and the meanness of life on Navassa. The Coast Guard kept keepers on Navassa until 1929, and today solar power keeps the automated beacon shining.

Visitors to Navassa must get permission from the Coast Guard at Miami and sign a page-long checklist of the dangers involved. Among them are the one rope ladder that leads to the surface of the mine, the possibility of running into Haitians hunting goats and the modern threat of drug smugglers, Hurley said. "Suprisingly," Hurley reports, "we get several requests a year." By CHET LUNNER Gannett News Service WASHINGTON Urgent rumors to the contrary, Navassa Is-. land, once described as "the most miserable place to be in the world," will remain a U.S. possession bird droppings, wild goats, legends, lighthouse and all.

A jagged, one-by-two-mile speck of Caribbean rock 30 miles west of Haiti, Navassa Island has a history as colorful as its landscape is forbidding. This barren spot is the setting for a quirky collection of tales. Those tales involve: the rescue of Christopher Columbus from a near-fatal shipwreck; the CIA and Cuba's pig population; the Panama Canal, Haitian goat rustlers and drug smugglers; and a Supreme Court decision that led to the hanging of Navassa Island rioters. The latest news on desolate Navassa Island arrives via press release from "State Department Watch," an answering-machine arid post-office-box operation run by Carl Olson of Toluca Lake, Calif. Olson, a champion of conservative causes, says his sources told him the United States was about to give the island to Haiti.

"This giveaway of American territory is just another in the State Department's pattern of shrinking American presence around the world," Olson scolds in his news release. "The State Department must be stopped in its drive to march backward from a world presence." State Department spokesman Teddy Taylor says no such marching orders have been cut foundation to that report," Taylor said after checking Olson's claim. "There were some discussions with Haiti during the Carter administration, but those discussions were broken off." Olson said he believes his sources are correct and suggests the huge diplomatic agency isn't ready to discuss its plans. A computer search for data about Navassa Island provides 'MICHIGAN'S LARGEST TOYOTA DEALER" some interesting tidbits. The CIA is suspected of helping anti-Castro agents smuggle African swine fever virus into Cuba via Navassa, shutting down Havana's pork production in 1971.

And ham radio buffs like to use Navassa during their worldwide communication contests. The real expert on Navassa is LL j.g. Neil Hijrley, supervisor of marine information at the Coast Guard base in Miami. "I think I know more about it than most anybody," he says. "The island was first visited in 1503 by Capt Diego Mendez," Hurley begins, rapid-fire.

"Mendez was one of Columbus' lieutenants. When Columbus ran aground on his last voyage Wait a minute Christopher Columbus? Running aground like some weekend sailor? "Yeah, on his fourth voyage, he was off Jamaica. His crew was near starvation, so he sent Mendez out with 14 Spaniards and 20 Indians in canoes to try and reach Hispaniola," Hurley relates. It was a good news-bad news trip. The good news: they found Navassa Island, with ponds of standing rain water.

The bad news: "When the Indians drank it, two of them dropped over dead," Hurley reports. No cause ever was established, although the tons of bird droppings, or guano, that cover the island might have been involved. Men-dez's crew managed to refresh themselves on Navassa and make it to Hispaniola, and a rescue TOYOTA 5701 S. PENNSYLVANIA 394-6000 DAILY HOURS: Mon. Thurs.

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