SELDOM have civilization and commerce been seen winning their way against the wilderness with faster and more firmly planted footsteps than in the neighborhood of Lake Superior. This is especially true of the Wisconsin and Minnesota shores, but the development of resources and means of access to the hitherto remote shores, and the building up of towns along the eastern and northeastern border have been nearly as remarkable.
Until a few years ago this great body of fresh water—the largest on the face of the earth, and one of the earliest known districts of this continent—had only a few ports, where fish, lumber, mining products, and the Indian trade sustained a comparatively insignificant commerce. But now populous cities, important ports, the terminus of railway systems, and the seat of an enormous commerce in grain and merchandise, as well as in raw materials, are rising and flourishing upon its picturesque margin.
An exceptionally rapid progress of this kind has taken place, as has been mentioned, along the southwestern shore, where forests of valuable timber cover a hilly and rocky region, whose declivities conceal deposits of iron and other ores, whose glades are fertile and only await the plow to be made agriculturally useful, all of whose rivers can exert a water power; and where shooting and fishing, invigorating air and delightful landscapes, add enjoyment to utility.
The principal elevations in this rugged region is a line of wooded and rocky summits, which stretch from Wisconsin into Michigan along a line somewhat parallel with the south shore of the lake, and are called the Gogebic Mountains—an Indian word, to be pronounced with both g’s hard, and the accent on the middle syllable. In 1873 Captain Nathaniel Moore, a strolling miner, wandered across these mountains, prospecting. He came to a place where a cyclone had preceded him, and denuded a great scarp on the face of the hills. Following its path he saw rich ores clinging to the roots of upturned trees, and the flooded streams which swept down the ravines were crimson with the blood of the richest Bessemer iron in an almost pure state. It took ten years to convince the cold world of capital that wealth lay on the surface of the Gogebic Range awaiting the advent of labor to gather it; but when once this conviction was enforced by those interested, capital flowed in, railways were built into and through the hills to the lakeports, and settlements sprang up everywhere. All this stimulated the shore towns, and under its influence, combined with other causes, struggling ports, like Duluth, Ashland, Bayfield, and others, throve and increased; while new towns of the interior, Hurley, Bessemer, Wakefield, and Washburn, rose from nothing to great local importance. Duluth has now acquired a population of forty-five thousand. Ashland has now about twelve thousand people. In brief, the influx into the region surrounding Lake Superior since 1882 amounts to fully two hundred thousand people.
Duluth, having the unrivaled prestige on Lake Superior, demands first mention. It is no farther from New York, by water, than Chicago, while it is three hundred miles nearer the grain-producing regions of Dakota, and five hundred miles nearer to the Pacific Ocean. The harbor of Duluth is the most remarkable on the Great Lakes. A long narrow sand dune, seven miles in length, land-locks a magnificent bay, which has sufficient depth and area to accommodate the combined merchant marine of the lakes; it is called Minnesota Point, and offers extraordinary facilities as a site for factories. On the mainland side of the harbor there rises abruptly a long chain of rocky projections, at the base of which, and clinging to its sides, is the city, in whose name is perpetuated the fame of one of the very earliest of French exploring traders in the Northwest. Thus the city is protected on the west from great storms, while its harbor is shielded from severe easterly gales.
Duluth originated so recently, and under such auspicious circumstances, that it had the benefit of the experience of other cities, and could conduct its growth on correct principles. From the outset, provision was made for expansion. Terminal facilities have been so arranged that all railways may enter without hindrance or limit as to number. Such great railway corporations as the Northern Pacific, the St. Paul, Minneapolis, and Manitoba, the Chicago, St. Paul, Minneapolis, and Omaha, the Duluth and St. Paul, the Canadian Pacific, the Wisconsin Central, and the Milwaukee, Lake Shore and Western, already have termini here, while several lesser roads are in active existence or in immediate prospect. It is said that nearly fifty companies have been incorporated, whose railroads already reach Duluth or expect to; and each of these railroads implies a shipping traffic and port-service corresponding to its pretensions, for it is at the best harbor at the western end of the lake, and the most western point of navigation in the Union, that Duluth finds a reason for its existence, and a promise of permanence. There are miles of slips, along which warehouses and coal-bins are arranged so that vessels may be unloaded and loaded simultaneously. The many elevators occupy a district of their own and are arranged in rows. In fact each commercial product has a distinct wharf area of its own, and is classified for shipment in a special locality. The elevator capacity is no less than twenty-five millions of bushels, and twenty millions of bushels of grain are now shipped annually, besides two million barrels of flour. The lumber exports alone amount to three hundred million feet annually.
Some seventy-five miles east of Duluth, at the head of the beautiful Chequamegon Bay, stands Ashland, Wisconsin, the second in importance of the port-cities of Lake Superior, and which owes its rise and strength to the development of the iron mines in its neighborhood, and to the harbor facilities, which have invited railways to make it their shipping point for ores, lumber, etc. Here are three of the largest ore-docks in the world. One of them is one thousand four hundred and five feet in length, including nine hundred and fifty feet of trestle approach. Its width is fifty-two feet and ten inches; height above water, forty feet; and it required one thousand three hundred and twenty-five miles of timbers to construct it. It has two hundred and thirty-four ore-pockets, with a storage capacity of twenty-six thousand tons, but it can carry one hundred and six thousand tons. The ore is discharged into vessels, either from the ore-cars on the dock or from the ore-pockets, by means of sheet-iron troughs. The two other docks are scarcely less capacious, and all are a scene of intense activity day and night. Trains of ore are arriving on two or three different roads every few minutes, and the wharves are lined with steamers and sailing vessels receiving their cargoes. Ashland has also a large blast furnace where the local ore is smelted into some thirty-two thousand tons of pig annually, suitable for the manufacture of Bessemer steel. This furnace eats up every year as much charcoal as the clearing of five square miles of forest will yield. The lumbering and manufacturing interests of Ashland, also, are large. Finally, its admirable situation upon the bluffs overlooking the lake and island dotted bay, its proximity to the many lakes and rivers, where good sport may be had, and its bracing climate during the warm months of the year, have brought Ashland into great prominence of late as a summer resort. An immense hotel, The Chequamegon, faces the very large bay, and is crowded both summer and winter with health and pleasure seeking guests. In front are the Apostle Islands, with beautiful shore lines, rich in picturesque views, and daily accessible by a pleasure steamer. Here are many antiquities, remains of the civilization established by Père Marquette. Here, too, are remnants of the Chippewa Indians, who have a reservation twelve miles from Ashland, and are largely civilized.
The ores and iron which dominate business in Ashland are all the product of the mining district thirty miles, or less, south of the city, and known in general as the Gogebic Range country. This range is about seventy miles long, half in Wisconsin and half in Michigan. Double veins of iron-ore have been traced along its whole length, and claims have been “located” from one end to the other; but actual operations have never been conducted on more than twenty miles of the veins. Out of some two hundred and ninety-five “mines” incorporated, with over three hundred million dollars of capital stock, only nineteen were in actual operation in 1888, and experts regard no more than thirty-one as capable of profitable working. Such is the outcome of the most extensive iron-mining “boom” the world ever saw. At first every prospect-hole was superlatively capitalized, and stock with a par value of over two hundred millions of dollars was sold to widows, working girls and business men, many of the latter of sufficient practical knowledge to have saved themselves from the dreadful wreck of fortunes which terminated the boom of 1885-86. At one time there were sixteen thousand laborers at work on the Range, but they melted away with the hopes of the capitalizers, until to-day there are probably less than two thousand miners at work. After the collapse desperate efforts were made to form several trusts to control the output of the Range, regulate railway freights, and build steamers of large capacity to transport the ore. The effort to form trusts in this locality failed, but the legitimate mines have gone on producing from seven hundred and fifty thousand to one million tons annually of the finest Bessemer ores. Out of the forty millions of tons of iron-ore which the Michigan mines have produced, the Gogebic Range has yielded nearly one-tenth in one-tenth of the time that the remaining mines of the State have been operated.
Through this iron region run the Wisconsin Central and the Milwaukee, Lake Shore and Western Railroads, the latter of which was the pioneer of the present civilization, and has reaped a large and justly earned reward from its early pluck and foresight. I was present when the “army of occupation,” hurrying thither at the beginning of the “boom,” marched in. The forest that covered a thousand square miles of territory succumbed to their steel. Five thousand buildings were erected in an incredibly short time. Some were surrounded by acres of stumps, others by gigantic trees, spared until they had to be destroyed. Some were made of hewed logs and others of rough boards. Some were large and commodious, others mere shanties. In many places the entire hillside would be alive with nascent homes, clinging to its precipitous face like barnacles to the coast rocks. These collections of dwellings, often having only the camp-name of some mine, lay so near one another as to blend together.
One of the most sudden in its rise, and still the largest municipality of the Gogebic region, is Hurley, on Montreal River. It has been burned several times, but each time has been rebuilt better. To-day it has many costly residences, business blocks, and conveniences of town life, while good order and assured progress have superseded the earlier roughness and uncertainty. Bessemer, Wakefield, Watersmeet, Mellen, Gogebic and other centers are growing and solidifying.
Until last year the wilderness of woods and rocks which covered the northern peninsula of Michigan, was penetrated by only one line of railroad—that running from St. Ignace, on the Straits of Mackinaw, to Ontonagon, whose copper mines have long been famous. Now two east-and-west lines connect the Mississippi Valley with the Sault Ste Marie, where a new bridge joins them to the Canadian Pacific system of railways, and furnishes an important through line between St. Paul and the Atlantic Coast.
The noted copper ledges of Lake Superior seem confined to a comparatively small strip along its southern shores. A few years ago the mining was mainly at the surface or near it. Lately important changes have taken place. Over two million tons of depths have been added to the sum total excavated, and all from lesser to greater depths underground. Many of the mines are now so deep that the interior heat of the earth makes it necessary to use ice for the comfort of the laborer confined in the heated atmosphere. As soon as it has been raised to the surface, the ore is passed through the rock crushers, then taken to a stamp-mill and pounded into fine mud and sand. It then runs through a system of sieves and jiggers and over slime tables, where, by an elaborate mechanical process, the copper is separated. It is then taken to a smelter, cast into ingots and sent to market. As a ton of rock contains about fifteen pounds of copper, it requires the treatment of one hundred and thirty-three tons of rock to produce one ton of pure refined copper. As the workings have descended further down into the earth, invention has found means of facilitating the excavation of ore by steam drills and costly hoisting and other machinery. There has been an addition of electric lighting, ponderous engines and hoisting apparatus, compressors of air, vertical shafts and cages. The civilization of the mining settlements has kept pace in improvement, until now it is a pleasant, as well as a profitable place to spend one’s life.
At the eastern extremity of the lake, on the right bank of its outlet over the rapids of St. Mary’s River, has stood for two centuries some kind of a settlement. First it was a French mission station and trading house; then an American fur-trading post and station for troops. Then the canal and splendid locks were built by the United States Government, at an expense of two million dollars, by which the largest vessels could easily pass from lake to lake. Sault Ste Marie, however, was never much more than an insignificant village, matched by a still poorer village on the Canadian side, until 1887, when the building of the new roads eastward from St. Paul, and westward from the Canadian Pacific’s main line at Sudbury, Ontario; and the construction of the great steel bridge spanning the rapids, caused the stagnant towns to spring into new life, and attracted there a combined population of several thousands. A large amount of building of various kinds has gone on, and “The Soo” is destined to become of much importance as a commercial point not only, but as a pleasure resort.
Here is one of the headquarters of the extensive fishery of Lake Superior, though this business is more systematically conducted, perhaps, at the western end of the lake, whence some fifteen thousand tons of trout and whitefish are annually sent to Chicago and other markets. (The catch at the eastern end of the lake goes mainly to Detroit and Eastern cities.) One day I made a trip in the tug which collects the catch in the environs of the Apostle Islands. We started at Bayfield, the most northern port of Wisconsin and a pretty summer resort. From this point we traveled sixty miles through the largest netting district. Here I witnessed the hauling of a three-mile net, and also its casting. This enormous net extends entirely across the widest channel among the islands along the bottom. The fish, in attempting to pass through it in schools, are entangled in its fine meshes—become literally wound in linen—and then give up the battle. A man stands on the rail of the tug with a gaff to hook those which are not sufficiently entangled or which are so large and powerful as to threaten escape. Two men grasp the fish as the net comes over the rail, and toss them to other men, who dress them. About a ton and a half of whitefish and trout were taken from it on this occasion. The gill net is the most common snares in use, while the pound net is set near the shores. Thus it happens that the entire water among the Apostle Islands is snared with gill nets in the channels, and with pound nets near the shores. The same is also true of the watery region around Isle Royal. The tug which I boarded spent most of the day operating the great gill net, after which it visited all the lesser fishing camps and collected the catch of the day.
The whole fishery of this bay is under control of a Chicago firm, which has icehouses at Duluth, Bayfield and elsewhere, and regulates the price of fish to suit its convenience. The firm also has many powerful fishing tugs and one large steamer, engaged in the trade exclusively. At Duluth is a government hatchery, which annually turns loose into the lake hundreds of thousands of young fishes to supply the great drain for market.
The north shore of Lake Superior remains almost wholly in its primitive wildness, but is no longer inaccessibly by land. The main line of the Canadian Pacific Railway strikes the lake at Heron Bay, its northeastern angle, and then runs close along the rock-bound coast, in the midst of scenery of striking magnificence, and by means of ingenious and costly engineering, until it reaches Thunder Bay, one hundred miles westward.
Thunder Bay is a deep indentation in the rear of the romantic and beautiful headland called Thunder Cape, and protected by the huge breakwater of Isle Royal. Silver Islet, which was formerly a marvel of riches in silver mining, is a tiny mass of rock outside the Cape, which furnished only room for the buildings at the mouth of the dangerous mineshaft. East of the Cape are a lot of islands ending in the great Michipocoten, which abound in various minerals, but are not occupied except by occasional fishermen and hunters. Through these islands, along the north shore, lay the route of the fur-trading canoes which came and went between Montreal and the fur-trading headquarters at Fort William, on Thunder Bay, where an extensive trade was conducted more than two centuries ago. Fort William is at the mouth of the Kaministiquia River, up which the canoes and batteaux began their further voyage along the series of lakes and streams which stretch between there and Lake Winnipeg. Around the old fort, parts of which still stand among the shops of the railway company, and overshadowed by a huge grain elevator and coal-bins, a large settlement of farmers and artisans has now arisen; while a few miles inland the highly productive silver mines of Rabbit Mountain and its neighborhood support a considerable population.
Four miles east of Fort William is Port Arthur, now containing about four thousand inhabitants, and the seat of an immense commerce, since it is the lake port of Canada’s transcontinental railway, and the terminus of two regular lines of steamers, besides the American traffic. Forty miles east of Port Arthur the Nipigon river comes down from Nipigon Lake. This river has long been famous for the abundance and extraordinary size of the trout and whitefish it contains, and it is a favorite resort for fishing and camping parties. Jackfish Bay, Sturgeon River, and many other landings along that shore, afford good fishing and shooting to the sportsmen, while the neighborhood of Fort William is attractive in that respect.
A railway has been surveyed from Port Arthur, through the silver-mining district, and past Rainy Lake to Duluth, but little has been done yet toward building it. It would pass through the Vermillion Iron Range, a line of hills about fifty miles in length, lying sixty miles north of Duluth. This country, which is rich in lumber, has wild scenery, and offers an almost untouched field for sport, is already reached by the Duluth and Iron Range Railway. The output of this range is about five hundred thousand tons per annum. The principal town is Tower City, which has several thousand inhabitants, while the natural outlet for the ore is at Two Harbors, about twenty miles north of Duluth, where the Minnesota Iron Company has built large ore-docks.
Lake Superior is a favorite cruising-ground for yachting parties, one of whose prime sports is trolling for lake trout in the early dawn. There is much to interest the voyager in every part of the lake. Along the southern shore are the Pictured Rocks, and many more beautiful in my estimation, that are not pictured but are tall and stately, overhanging the lake by hundreds of feet. Some of these have great arches excavated by the waves, and some have quaint forms in imitation of cathedrals and other structures.
