Viewing our northern states west to east, you’d quickly
spot Lake Superior at the top of the collection of lakes that link the
Midwest and the east along the U.S.-Canada border. We’ve been traveling east
to west, however, so we’d already been at the east-most end of the line (lakes Ontario
and Erie), past its middle (lakes Huron and Michigan), and even to the eastern
end of Superior (Sault Ste Marie). This time we stopped at the Great Lakes’
west-most end, Duluth, MN, for a few days to understand more about Superior’s
uniqueness and contribution to commercial America.
Traveling here from Sault Ste Marie along Superior’s
coastline meant crossing all of the UP of Michigan and a bit of Wisconsin to
reach the eastern border of Minnesota—350 miles and an object lesson in why the
British named this body of water “Superior,” in a nod to the lake’s magnitude compared
to the others.
Superior was originally called gichi-gami, “be a
great sea,” by the Ojibwa tribe. For surface area, it is the largest freshwater lake on earth, holding
10% of the world’s fresh liquid water (as opposed to fresh water stored as ice)
and having its own weather-driven history. Think of a bathtub that’s 160 miles wide
by 350 miles long, with an average depth of 490 feet (max 1,330 feet). Start
the waters moving as a storm rises. Winds reach gale force, waves slop and
build, and their energies get so amplified that ships can ride 20 to 30 feet vertically
up one side and slam down 20 to 30 feet vertically on the other, often spinning
and getting broadsided or rolled on the way. It’s no wonder the lake is a
graveyard of more than 350 known ships, the most famous of which is “The Edmund
Fitzgerald,” a 729-foot Great Lakes freighter that went down in 1975, all 29
hands lost. (Yes, the same one that inspired the Gordon Lightfoot song.)
Duluth is one half of a dual-port setup at the lake’s western end. It shares its twinship with the nearby port of Superior, Wisconsin, under one label, Port Duluth-Superior, that serves one long harbor called Superior Bay. Commerce (and ship watching) is constant. Lake freighters drop off or pick up iron ore
pellets, cement, limestone, rock, wheat, grains, and miscellaneous weighty cargo, some taking one to two days to load
or unload.
Much of Duluth’s residences are on hills that slope gently from waterside through tree-rich
neighborhoods. The big-box stores are way up past the crest of the hills,
convenient for residents, but not visible from port. At water’s edge is a
compact downtown that’s been undergoing significant renovation over the past
decades. It reminds me of a slice of Pioneer Square in Seattle—lots of brick,
coffee shops, an olive oil tasting room, galleries, food establishments, and
waterfront walking, but without the alleyways, viaduct overpass, and huge, merchant-covered
piers.
Several former cargo slips, derelict from the 1800s, have
been filled and converted to grassy parks and boardwalks. The recently built
Aquarium of the Great Lakes and nearby convention center (welcoming guests to a
quilt show while we were there) lay low against the skyline near the water. A
retired lake freighter is moored for touring, and a wide, trouble-ridden
wood-and-steel footbridge (built 1991) pauses pedestrians behind a barricade as
it opens and closes for motorboat traffic from a smaller “inland” marina along
the boardwalk.
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| A key attraction in the city is the Aerial
Lift Bridge, designed to get people and cars across the Duluth Ship Canal while
also allowing lake freighters through to the loading docks in the bay’s
interior. |
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| The bridge links the mainland (left) with the seven-mile, thin
spit of land called Minnesota
Point (right), which was punched through in the late 1800s to create the
shipping canal, and where residents still live and beach-romp. The first version
of the bridge (1905) had a
gondola-like conveyance that could carry 350 passengers plus wagons, autos, and
streetcars back and forth across the channel like a low-slung Skyfari ride. When
a ship came, they’d park the gondola to one side, let the ship through, then
resume their ferrying. As ships got taller and more cars and tourists arrived, engineers came up with this design,
a vertical lift bridge, in which the bridge’s entire roadbed is blocked off at
both ends and then lifts to allow ships to pass under. The whole raising,
pass-through, and lowering process can keep foot and car traffic waiting from 2 minutes
to half an hour, depending on ship size. |
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| A first-time for me: our RV spot was at a marina,
right alongside the slips for sailboats and motorboats, and next to the
shipyard where they slung up boats for repair. Our view was across the channel to the bridge, and we were within walking
distance of downtown and the really good Duluth visitor center/lake history
museum and ship-watching pier. Throughout our stay, we saw the bridge
raise and lower for vessels as small as sailboats and as large as lake
freighters like those we watched at the Soo Locks. |
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| Superior is known for being one of the cleanest,
clearest lakes in the country. However, the water here in Duluth is brown. Yes,
brown. A motorboat passing by looks like it’s spraying coffee in
its wake, all due to red silt and clay sediment from the Nemadji River. The
harbor must be dredged annually of buildup to maintain shipping depth. |
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| Having lived most of my life on the west coast,
I’m still flabbergasted to see beaches that aren’t ocean shore. It just seems wrong. The water is apparently safe to
swim in, albeit murky. This is the north side of the Minnesota Point peninsula. |
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| Minnesota Point is more than a seven-mile strand of sand: this forest walk begins at the peninsula’s dead-end road. We hit mud and
mosquitoes after about a half mile, so turned back, but the trail does go all
the way to the point, another four or so miles away. |
