Kingsford Charcoal Began With Scrap Wood From a U.P. Sawmill

Kingsford charcoal is not made in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula today. The company’s current FAQ lists plants in Kentucky, Missouri, Oregon, and West Virginia. But the brand’s origin does run through Dickinson County, where Ford Motor Company turned scrap wood from an enormous lumber operation into a product it could sell.

A car company looks north

Early automobile bodies used large amounts of wood. Ford wanted a dependable supply of hardwood for automobile framework, floorboards, wheels, and other parts, so Henry Ford contacted Edward G. Kingsford, the Ford dealer in Iron Mountain and Ford’s cousin-in-law.

Kingsford arranged the purchase of roughly 313,000 acres of Upper Peninsula timberland for Ford. Construction on the local sawmill and parts operation began in 1920. The settlement around the plant was chartered as the Village of Kingsford in 1923, and the City of Kingsford’s history says employment connected to Ford’s Dickinson County expansion peaked at 7,500 workers in 1925.

Turning scrap wood into charcoal

A sawmill that large produced mountains of chips and offcuts. Ford built a chemical plant to recover value from that waste, and the City of Kingsford says it was operating by 1924. According to the city’s history, each ton of scrap wood yielded about 610 pounds of charcoal that could be formed into Ford Charcoal Briquettes.

The Henry Ford’s collection records explain the process: workers dried and carbonized wood chips, crushed the resulting char, mixed it with starch, and compressed it into briquettes. By the mid-1930s, the Iron Mountain operation was forming nearly 100 tons of briquettes a day.

Sold through Ford dealerships

Ford did not keep the charcoal inside its factories. The company sold bags through automobile dealerships and through hardware, sporting-goods, and department stores. Its 1930s marketing included a brochure titled Ford Charcoal Briquets, Fuel of a Hundred Uses and picnic kits that paired charcoal with a portable grill.

How Ford Charcoal became Kingsford

In 1951, Ford closed the local sawmill and parts plant and sold the chemical operation to local business interests. They formed the Kingsford Chemical Company and renamed the product Kingsford Charcoal Briquettes. The current Kingsford history says the name honored Edward G. Kingsford, the dealer and land agent who had helped Ford establish its Upper Peninsula operations.

The charcoal plant continued operating in Kingsford until 1961. The brand later became part of The Clorox Company, whose most recent annual report still lists Kingsford among its grilling products. Kingsford’s website now says it converts more than one million tons of leftover wood into briquettes each year, but its current production facilities are outside Michigan.

That distinction matters. The U.P. connection is a documented origin story, not a claim that today’s bags contain Dickinson County wood. Ford’s effort to reuse sawmill scrap created the local charcoal operation, and the product eventually carried the name of the U.P. community and the man who helped build it.

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Sources, credits, and reporting details

Sources & accountability

How this story was reported

Editorial methodArchival synthesis

Accountable editor:Keegan O’Brien, publisher and editor.

Last verifiedJul. 22, 2026

Corrections statusNo material correction note is recorded on this article.

Verification note: Historical claims were reconciled against the City of Kingsford and The Henry Ford's collection records. Current ownership was checked against Clorox's fiscal-2025 Form 10-K. Current production-location and wood-use statements are explicitly attributed to Kingsford's own website. The unsupported current 80-percent market-share figure and unverified Edison-factory claim were removed.

Primary sources

1. The History of the City of Kingsford — City of Kingsford

   Accessed Jul. 22, 2026.

   Supports: Edward G. Kingsford facilitated Ford's purchase of 313,447 acres; local construction began in 1920; the village charter was approved in 1923; Ford-related employment peaked at 7,500 in 1925; the chemical plant operated by 1924 and recovered 610 pounds of charcoal per ton of scrap; Ford sold the chemical operation in 1951; the product was renamed Kingsford Charcoal Briquettes; and local charcoal production continued until 1961.

   Official municipal history by Roger Scott. Used for the local chronology and quantities; not used to establish current market share.

2. Ford Charcoal Briquets — The Henry Ford

   Accessed Jul. 22, 2026.

   Supports: Ford made charcoal from U.P. lumber-operation scraps, mixed the char with starch, compressed it into briquettes, and sold it through Ford dealerships and conventional retailers; collection artifacts document nearly 100 tons per day and 1930s picnic-kit and 'Fuel of a Hundred Uses' marketing.

   Institutional collection set linking claim-level descriptions to Ford Motor Company artifacts and photographs.

3. Ford in Michigan's Upper Peninsula — The Henry Ford

   Accessed Jul. 22, 2026.

   Supports: Ford acquired more than 313,000 acres of U.P. timberland; its Iron Mountain complex supplied wooden automobile components and converted wood waste into nearly 100 tons of charcoal briquettes per day in the mid-1930s.

   Cross-check for the land, automobile-parts, plant, and production claims.

4. Kingsford History — Kingsford Products Company

   Accessed Jul. 22, 2026.

   Supports: The product began under Ford's brand, was later renamed for Edward G. Kingsford, and the company says it currently converts more than one million tons of leftover wood into charcoal briquettes annually.

   Corporate first-party source. The annual wood-use statement is attributed to the company and not presented as an independently audited Yooper measurement.

5. Kingsford FAQ — Kingsford Products Company

   Accessed Jul. 22, 2026.

   Supports: Kingsford currently lists manufacturing facilities in Kentucky, Missouri, Oregon, and West Virginia and states that it converts one million tons of leftover wood into briquettes each year.

   Used to distinguish the documented U.P. origin from the present-day supply chain.

6. The Clorox Company Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2025 — The Clorox Company / U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission

   Published Aug. 8, 2025. Accessed Jul. 22, 2026.

   Supports: Clorox lists Kingsford grilling products among the brands it markets, establishing current corporate ownership at the filing date.

   Regulatory filing; used only for current ownership and brand relationship.

Photo and media credits

1. Disposable barbecue 5 hot coal.jpg — Ypsilon from Finland / Wikimedia Commons

   Featured image record. Published Jul. 22, 2023. Accessed Jul. 22, 2026. CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication.

   Supports: Source, creator, and rights record for featured attachment 1850.

   Commons identifies this as the uploader's own work. WordPress stores a 1920×1440 derivative of the 4032×3024 source aspect ratio. The completed pixel-identity audit matched it to the exact cited Commons original and found ordinary resizing and lossy recompression sufficient to explain the observed differences; undocumented import-processing and AI-alteration history remain unknown.

2. Ford Model T 1924-1925.jpg — LibertyGroup25 / Wikimedia Commons

   Published Jan. 28, 2014. Accessed Jul. 22, 2026. CC BY-SA 3.0 Unported.

   Supports: Source, creator, and rights record for inline attachment 1851.

   Commons identifies this as the uploader's own work; embedded WordPress metadata credits Christopher Burke. WordPress stores a 1920×1492 web derivative of the 4288×3332 source aspect ratio. The completed pixel-identity audit matched it to the exact cited Commons original and found ordinary resizing and lossy recompression sufficient to explain the observed differences. Credit must link the file and CC BY-SA license and state that Yooper resized it; undocumented import-processing and AI-alteration history remain unknown.

3. Smoldering charcoal briquettes.JPG — Juliancolton / Wikimedia Commons

   Accessed Jul. 22, 2026. Public-domain dedication by copyright holder.

   Supports: Source, creator, and rights record for inline attachment 1853.

   Commons dates the photo only to June 2009 and records a public-domain dedication. WordPress stores a 1920×1285 web derivative of the 3872×2592 source aspect ratio. The completed pixel-identity audit matched it to the exact cited Commons original and found ordinary resizing and lossy recompression sufficient to explain the observed differences; undocumented import-processing and AI-alteration history remain unknown.

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