Doug Spade and Mike Clement
There’s not much to do in Ewen, Michigan. With only a couple of car dealerships, an auto repair place, and a tire shop bunched together along the main drag and a population on a good day of maybe 500, you might miss it completely while tooling along M-28 in Ontonagon County.
The school’s the focal point, of course. Always is in an unincorporated community. And the locals still reminisce about the state basketball titles the newly consolidated Ewen-Trout Creek captured nearly 50 years ago — the boys in 1972 and the girls the year after that. In fact, the Panthers are still one of the top teams around. But athletic prowess isn’t why Upper Peninsula folks along and all points north and south of the 7-hour jaunt from Drummond Island to Ironwood now have a beef with Ewen and the McMillan Township populace in general.