In July 1960, the Ford Times introduced readers to one of Michigan’s most elusive marvels: a 24-by-20-inch prehistoric red-ochre painting clinging to a limestone cliff at Burnt Bluff, overlooking Big Bay de Noc.

Written by Eugene T. Petersen, the article spotlighted the "Spider Man" pictograph, which archaeologists at the time estimated was painted from a canoe roughly 1,500 years ago when the water level was higher. While early observers believed it depicted a man connected to the sun, native oral history of the region suggests the figure represents a spiritual leader connected by a sacred lifeline to the web of creation.

A subsequent study of the area located 13 total pictographs on the bluff. Unfortunately, tourism and natural weathering rapidly deteriorated the art. Today, only faint, nearly invisible remnants of the paintings remain on the cliffside.

But thanks to Petersen’s early documentation, the Spider Man remains forever memorialized in the pages of the Ford Times archive.

Read the story via the Ford Times archive, July 1960. Browse more at FordHeritageVault.com.