Where do I begin a post about these amazing marvels of human engineering. The St. Mary’s River splits the old city of Saulte Ste Marie in two and the waterway is the only way in or out of Lake Superior. The rapids that form in the river here, which give the city her name Saulte Ste Marie as it means rapids of Saint Mary, drop by an elevation of about 21 feet in just over a mile. With Europeans moving in and trade and enterprise ramping up in the 18th century, it was clear that a way to pass down the falls for merchant and trade vessels was becoming necessary. In the beginning boats would be ported short of the falls on either side, unloaded taken apart and reassembled and reloaded past the rapids. A process with the intricate sail freighters of the time that could take months. Later as trade grew and more vessels entered the area, certain vessels stayed in Lake Superior making the dismantling of the boats unnecessary. It still however, took considerable man power and time to move the ever growing cargos.
The British were the first to take on the task by opening the first locks in 1797 on the Canadian side, but were destroyed 15 years later during the war of 1812. The U.S. opened its first lock on the rapids in 1855, and though expanded and upgraded over the years it is essentially the same lock structure in use today. With the Eerie canal opening in 1824 and the locks completing the Great Lakes waterway system it is considered one of the greatest infrastructure engineering achievements of the antebellum United States. Designated a National Historic Landmark in 1966, we were about to board a boat to traverse the locks ourselves and take a closer look at how the locks operate and learn a little more about this modern marvel of North America.
For those that are unsure about how a lock works I’ll give you a quick lesson. Usually connecting two bodies of water with different elevations for maritime traffic, you essentially pull your boat into the lock, the lock is sealed on both sides and the water is either raised or lowered depending on which way you are going, the gates are then opened and off you go. The entire process is gravity fed in both directions, valves are opened to let water in from the higher body of water to raise it and to lower it valves are opened on the lock to let water out into the lower body of water. It’s actually a very simple design and the only difficulty comes in engineering the lock to keep water out from the gates on either end. I can’t imagine the pressure that is exerted when a body of water the size of Lake Superior wants in.
We boarded the tour boat next to the Edison Saulte power canal and power plant. The plant itself is rather impressive, excavation for the canal and power complex was begun in September of 1898 and completed in June of 1902. The structure was designed in classical style and built to hold 74 generators under a single roof. The facing of the mighty structure was carved from the sandstone excavated to make the canal that fed water into the plant itself. A marvel of early 20th century industry and still in full use today, the facility was designated a Historic Civil Engineering Landmark In 1983.
We made our way into the the smaller dock building next to the massive power plant and purchased our tickets. The boat was leaving in a few minutes so we hurried down the dock and boarded the yellow and blue tour boat which would be our viewing platform for the next couple of hours. As the captain came over the speakers and gave us the typical boat rules and regulations, we pulled our moorings and pushed off west towards the locks. There are four American locks on the southern side of the Saint Mary’s River and all commercial traffic goes through these locks. From south to north they are the MacArthur, Poe, Davis and Sabin. Both the Davis and Sabin Locks have been decommissioned in recent years and have not had a passage since 2008. The two locks are to be rebuilt into a new super lock with funding approved by Congress on October 23rd 2018. The MacArthur lock, the American lock we would navigate, began service in 1943 and is 800 feet long, 80 feet wide and 29.5 feet deep. It is large enough to service most vessels from ocean going merchant ships and all pleasure craft.
As we headed towards the MacArthur lock we passed a cluster of old homes just out from the dock and the guide of our tour pointed out the homes as residences of the Johnston’s and Schoolcraft’s. Henry Rowe Schoolcraft was a well known Explorer, Author and general expert of Native American culture of the 19th century. He had traveled extensively in the Midwestern and Southern U.S. and published a book about his adventures in 1821. The success and value of his book led him to be appointed, in 1822, to the position of U.S. Indian agent at Saulte Ste Marie. He would spend several years in the area writing about the Ojibwe (Chippewa) Indians of the region and marry an Ojibwe with whom he would father four children. It was in the little White House there that Schoolcraft would pen many of his works on Indian Culture and mythology that would become inspiration for Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s epic poem, The Song Of Hiawatha.
As we moved closer to the MacArthur Locks you could see a large Ocean liner moving into position at the Poe Locks. The Poe locks are the largest of the locks at 1200 feet long and 110 feet wide, opened in 1968, she can pass the largest of ocean vessels and 70% of all commercial cargo at the locks goes through the Poe. Between the two locks is an island which houses an Army corps of engineers building and equipment that operates the locks. If you look closely you can see that the massive freighter moving into the Poe lock is actually two boats. The freighter is the Great Lakes Trader and the huge tug boat Joyce L. Van Enkevort has locked into a groove at her stern. The massive tug boats will navigate large freighters in and out of the lock system.
The Army Corps of Engineers Detroit district operates the locks here at Saulte Ste Marie and does not charge a fee for any vessel to pass through the locks. Though relatively remote and in a seemingly obscure location these “Soo” locks, as the locals call them, are the busiest locks in the world by annual tonnage of goods. Historically one of the most vital locks for the American military and general economy 90 percent of the worlds iron ore and 100 percent of North American mined and processed iron taconite passes through the locks at Saulte Ste Marie. During WWII the area was one of the most heavily defended regions of North America as 90% of all steel used in the making of allied tanks, ships and planes traveled through the locks. It is said that the locks are so vital for the American economy that if they were to be inoperable for even a few weeks it could send the global economy into a depression. The locks are the busiest even with a mandatory shutdown from January through March as Repairs are made while the ice makes shipping traffic almost impossible.
As we waited for the safety buoy to be lifted out of position you could see the international bridge over the channels up ahead and within a few minutes the all clear was given and we moved into the locks. We were headed up this time and you could see how far down we were from the decking above us. There was an observation platform to our left which was full of people viewing the locks as we traversed through and an Army Engineer moored us to the side of the lock. It was pretty interesting to watch as the gates shut behind us and rather quickly, I’d say in the course of 7 or 8 minutes, we were at the height of Lake Superior and the engineer who was once high above was us was now quite a bit below. As we were directly beside the Poe lock, we were able to see the massive ocean liner also make its way up towards the level of Lake Superior.
As the western gates opened and we began to move out onto the Lake Superior side of the river the international railroad bridge came closer into view. It runs parallel to the international bridge we crossed earlier in the day and was originally built in 1887 It has been modified a few times since, most notably in 1913 when the bascule section was added in the span over the Sabin and Davis Locks. As the modifications were made to allow for shipping traffic through the locks being built beneath her, each section was adjusted to the technology of its locks era resulting in no less than five different types of spans on the railroad bridge. The span over the Channel that feeds the MacArthur and Poe locks is a vertical lift span completed in 1960. Next in line is a bascule span as well as a series of camelback trusses cross the Sabin, Davis, natural rapid and canal sections of the locks, while a swing span is used over the Canadian lock and the bridge is balanced on each end by plate girder spans. As we headed further out into the waterway you could see up close both the lift span and bascule span sections of the bridge. All the sections of the bridge are locked together 4 times a day for freight train passage between the two nations.
Algoma Steel
We continued out into the waterway and swung north to see up close and personal another monument to early 20th century industry. Just west of the locks on the Canadian side of the river was a massive industrial complex. Part of the tour, I was unaware of at the time of boarding, was a tour of this massive structure. The Algoma Steel plant and its campus takes up almost all of the view of the western side of Canadian Saulte Ste Marie. From its coal piles that climb 100 feet high, to its endless mountains of slag it is an amazing display of human achievement. Crushed limestone used in the process were also piled in miniature mountains near the plant site. Construction began on the plant in February of 1901 and though it has gone through a few expansions over the years, it has continuously been producing steel since February 18th, 1902. As we maneuvered closer to the plant itself you could see the massive piles of rust tinged taconite iron ore used in the steel production process. It was almost as if the air itself was rusted and the entire complex looked painted in the earthy red hue. It really was an impressive example of human ingenuity and industry.
Canadian locks
As we were now in Canada again we would be making our return trip through the locks through the Canadian side. The Canadian locks are only used for smaller vessels and are also free to use for passing vessels. For many years following the construction of the American locks Canada had no way itself of navigating up the river and was often at the mercy of American whims. Usually things went smoothly, but in 1870 this was not the case. North America was not entirely mapped and settled in 1870 and as the pacific coast of the U.S. was still being settled out as territory’s and young newly confirmed states, so to was western Canada. In fact most of modern day Canada was simply known as the northwest territory at the time and the U.S. was eyeing expansion further into the Americas as well. One can look at a modern map today and see how Alaska, separated from the rest of continental America, is an example of that late 19th century push to settle the boundaries of the continent. And so it was in 1870 that Canada began to settle what would come to be Manitoba. However, there was an uprising in the area known as the Red River Rebellion that was jeopardizing Canada’s claim to the region.
British Colonel Garnet Wolseley was dispatched to crush the rebellion in 1870, but at the time there were no land routes across the Canadian wilderness and the only routes were by land over American soil or through the locks by waterway. As modern diplomacy was not yet in place the U.S. had a strict policy at the time that Canadian and British forces could not pass over U.S. lands. The locks weren’t particularly against American policy, but passage was also denied to Wolseley and his expeditionary force aboard the Chicora. The event would come to be known the Chicora incident. The red river area was at the time contested somewhat and a Minnesota expansionist movement was also pushing for territorial gains in the area. In all Wolseley was delayed by many months in reaching the red river valley, but his forces would be the first military in mass to take position there and ultimately secure Canada’s claim to the newly minted province of Manitoba.
It was this event and this event alone that would easily convince the Canadian government that a lock of their own was necessary, they completed their single lock in 1895. At the time of its opening it was the largest lock in the world and the first to be operated by electricity. All the locks are electric today and all of the energy required to operate them is produced in a designated hydroelectric plant in the center of the lock structure. As we passed into the locks you could see the swing section of the railroad bridge and the 1896 administrative building along the beautiful boardwalk park on the Canadian shore. We were joined by a couple of smaller vessels and as the gates were shut and the valves opened, we lowered in a matter of only a few minutes. It was interesting as when we first entered the Canadian lock we were high above the sidewalk and as the lock reached its low level all you could see was a wall of concrete. The gates began to open and after the other two vessels pulled past we headed out towards Lake Huron. We made a quick pass around the Canadian shore and back across to the U.S. and it was time to head in as our tour of the locks had come to an end. We came along the broadside of the Edison Canal and power plant and it was all I could do to get the 1/4 mile structure in one frame. We exited the boat and began our long journey back to the Cabins in Hiawatha for another session of the dock at sunset.
