Harbors

Schooner Roseway , @ St. Ignace, Michigan.

The other day Larry asked "Where's the casino?" Of course, in May of 1991 Sarnia's Casino was still a warehouse. (I'm quite certain Larry actually knows that.) Far more interesting to look at, too, if you ask me. Taken from Port Huron with my Chinon Genesis III and a too-grainy roll of film. That's the (still singular) Blue Water Bridge in the background.

Detroit's waterfront, May 28, 1990. The more I look at this photo, the better I like it. Every Memorial Day weekend, the Marine Historical Society of Detroit sponsors a tour from Detroit to Port Huron and back. The 1990 tour used both Bob Lo boats, and both were fully loaded. This photo was taken from the bow of St. Clair just as the tour began. Or mebbe from Columbia's bow. It's been a long time.... ================== Now, with both big boats inactive (I did not say retired), MHSD's tour necessarily uses smaller boats....

Marquette, Michigan; late 1980s. That's Presque Isle Park in the background, and Lake Superior in the foreground. Taken from the foot of the LS&I dock. Camera: Minolta Freedom 100

"Saturday September 12, 1965 SS. Detroit Edison passing downbound [sic] under Ambassador Bridge with coal from Toledo Middle of Bridge" 9/12/65 was obviously a beautiful day in Detroit.... Detroit Edison, as you might guess, carried coal to the power plants along the river. She was scrapped (in Texas) in 1987; evidently Belle River replaced her pretty directly. Borucki's Lakers

Shot from the Milwaukee Harbor tour boat Iroquois in 1992. Severely cropped. Not my best photograph ever.

From the breakwater, more or less by Coast Guard Station North Superior (so named because Grand Marais, Michigan, also had a CGS; Minnesota's Grand Marais had to have a unique designation). The huge private boat in the picture is called Northland; they were about to leave. I suspect they expected more privacy than the location actually afforded.

Except for the big boats which come calling at the Missabe docks, Two Harbors, Minnesota, would just be a pretty little town nestled against Agate Bay. The light flashed just as I released the shutter....

NP's dock is/was right next to the Great Northern's ore dock complex at Allouez (Superior), Wisconsin. GN's Dock Three, which was wooden, has been removed and the only dock which is currently in use is Dock Five, which is newer and which was built to move ore with conveyors, not trains. The others in the set, including this one, are no longer attached to the tracks. The GN dock is now a BNSF facility, of course. Shot from the parking lot of a gas station. I didn't know you could get this close to the dock, or I'd have photographed it before....

By the mid-1950s, ore supplier Pickands-Mather had extensive experience with iron ore shipping. Since they were building a new facility at the top of the lakes, they applied all that experience and built the perfect ore dock. This is it. Right at the moment it's not in use, but that is apparently just a temporary situation--perfect or no, the dock's worthless without something to ship. The trains came down from the Erie Mining Taconite plant and followed an oval trestle over the dock, rather than waiting while cars were shuffled on and off the deck. The operation was sufficiently automated that the train would never completely stop moving, and the enormous switching effort required atop a more conventional dock was no longer essential. More recent docks have addressed the same problem with conveyors , and the Missabe Road has converted two of its conventional docks into conveyor shiploaders . BNSF's Dock Five, mentioned in my previous writeup , has always struck me as a compromise solution.

Dock One, on the right, is a pure gravity dock, where trains drop the ore (Taconite pellets, nowadays) into big containers (pockets) and the ships are loaded by opening chutes and letting gravity pull the ore into the boat. Dock Two is a gravity dock on the near side, but a conveyor-driven shiploader on the far side. The thousand foot ships necessarily load at the shiploader, as the gravity docks aren't able to properly balance the loads on the wider vessels. Taken from the lighthouse parking lot. ====================== Although this photograph's fairly sharp, it's unexpectedly grainy, perhaps because of the weather. Looks kinda like I scanned a postcard....

The long-abandoned Soo Line dock, built for the (original) Wisconsin Central, at Ashland, Wisconsin. Ashland was the nearest port to the Gogebic (or Penokee; what you call it depends more on where you live than any objective reality) Range in Wisconsin and Michigan so the Gogebic iron mines generally shipped through this town. The last mine closed in 1965, and the last shipment occurred at that time; since then, this dock's been just sitting there. The wooden trestle approach still stands but is obviously unsafe. I was expecting they'd have torn it down by now. For the first half of the twentieth century, this town generally had three ore docks; this is the only survivor because the others were built of wood.

Memorial Day weekend, 1990, from the deck of Boblo boat St. Clair . Taken on the annual river outing of the Marine Historical Society of Detroit . My memory says the boat at the coal dock was James Barker , but I consider that unreliable. I'm gonna be paying for my fast film habit forever....

At the Manistique light; north end of Lake Michigan.

At Frankfort (foreground) and Elberta, Michigan, in 1991. The ship had recently been appointed a National Historic Landmark. City of Milwaukee was built in 1930 for the Grand Trunk Railway, and ended her career in 1981 when the State closed down the Ann Arbor Railroad ferry operation. She sat there in the Frankfort harbor for nearly two decades, then moved to Manistee. She's functioning now as a museum . The alert reader will notice that the two sites I've linked to show slightly different dates for "built" and "retired." Such is life, I guess.

Duluth harbor, from the pilot house of former US Steel Great Lakes Fleet flagship William A. Irvin , in August of 1988 (I think.) The Irvin was retired in the late 1970s, and has been a museum in Duluth's harbor for the past two decades. That's the Duluth Aerial Lift Bridge , of course, near the center of the photo. The ferry sharing the channel with the the Irvin is Wenonah . Wenonah's now one of the boats ferrying visitors from Grand Portage to Isle Royale, but I don't know what she was doing in 1988.

The remnant of Manistique's old railroad ferry dock gives a bit of historical context to some brand-new condominiums. I'm no fan of waterfront condos; in general, they ruin historic waterfronts. But that doesn't mean I won't buy one when I retire. The railroad ferry mostly connected the Manistique and Lake Superior Railway with the Ann Arbor in Elberta , but for a time it also had a Pere Marquette connection at Northport . The railroad failed in 1968. As recently as 1992, the ferry dock was pretty much intact .

Explored (111 on Wednesday, September 19, 2007). Thanks! (No longer in the top 500. So goes Explore.) Wilfred Sykes ( again ) and an array of pleasure craft about to clear the Muskegon breakwater. Sykes will shortly be turning south, likely for one of the steel mills in northern Indiana. This photo works quite well in the larger sizes ....