Webster Marble Inventing the Outdoors Museum

​Many say Webster Marble put the Upper Peninsula on the map. Born in Frankfort, Michigan, he came to the U.P. in the late 1880s to be a timber cruiser and surveyor. His rare ability to size up specific forest acreage and tell logging companies how many board feet they could expect to yield made him popular when lumber was king in the U.P. But while other loggers were jawing around the campfire, Webster was sketching tools that would make his work in the woods safer and easier. 

In the early 1890s, Marble started designing and hand-making four core products in his Gladstone garage. The first was a safety ax that came with an attached blade guard that folded into the handle when using the ax. Marble had seen too many injuries caused by carrying uncovered, razor-sharp ax blades in the wilderness. With the invention of the safety ax, the Marble Ax Company began in 1892.

Marble also designed a match safe that kept matches dry, an invention inspired after falling into the Sturgeon River and soaking the matches he needed to light a fire to stay warm and cook his food. He created the Marble Ideal Knife for hunting and camping and a pin compass you could affix to a coat that let you easily see your direction without fumbling for a compass in your pocket.