Ore Dock - History

History

Ore docks were a common sight in many Lake Superior ports of Minnesota, Wisconsin and especially Michigan. Rich iron ore deposits were first discovered in the Upper Peninsula in the 1840s and remain a significant source of wealth for the state. By the 1890s, Michigan was the largest supplier of iron ore in the United States. Railroads would haul ore from the mines to great ore docks on the Great Lakes in places such as Escanaba and Marquette, where it would be loaded on ore freighters and transported to the rest of the country.

Iron ore was first discovered in Michigan's Upper Peninsula on September 19, 1844, by William A. Burt, who was then employed to lead a party engaged in surveying the Upper Peninsula on behalf of the United States government. Variations in the readings of magnetic compasses employed suggested that something was disturbing the local magnetic fields, and, on investigation of part of the Marquette Iron Range, ore was found as close to the surface as just below the sod.

Development of this find was ongoing throughout the 1840s and early 1850s. The initial focus was on producing iron locally, as shipping was difficult. Early shipping attempts using mule teams, plank roads, and barrels loaded as deck cargo on schooners required transshipment after portaging the St. Marys River rapids, and costs proved prohibitive. However, as the mines continued to develop and railways were put in place, the volume of ore increased, far outstripping the local production capacity. In 1855, the Soo Locks opened, and the volume of ore shipped increased, with the first year seeing 1447 tons on various brigs and schooners. The first dock specifically for the ore trade was built in Marquette in 1857. It was flat rather than elevated, and the vessels were loaded with wheelbarrows.

By 1860, the volume of ore shipped through the Soo Locks had increased to 114,401 tons, only to fall again to 49,909 tons in 1861 after the American Civil War broke out. However, by 1862, an additional wooden dock had been constructed at Marquette, this time featuring an elevated railway trestle for ore jennies to discharge ore into pockets. In 1911 another iron ore loading dock was built, where the wooden frame work was replaced with a concrete and steel frame work. The new iron ore loading dock at Marquette, was 1200 feet long; 75 feet high; and 60 feet wide. Four railroad tracks ran across the top and there was storage space inside the bottom concrete part for 60,000 tons of iron ore. The new iron ore loading dock incorporated a concrete bottom half with and a light steel frame work on top; doing away with the wooden supports used in previous iron ore docks. While more expensive than previous iron ore loading docks, that used both iron and wood frame works, the builders claimed the new construction would hold up far longer than the old construction method. Schooners now started to feature regularly spaced hatch covers, speeding up loading. However steamers of the day were not well adapted for bulk cargoes such as iron ore. They did not have hatches through their decks. Instead they had gangways through the sides. So ore shipments were loaded via wheelbarrows through the gangways. The docks had provisions for this by having a flat surface on one side and moorings directly under the pockets for schooners to receive the ore directly, while steamers moored on the opposite side of the dock. However, unloading was still a laborious hand-powered affair.

During this period, the iron ore trade was dwarfed by the grain and lumber trade. For example, grain received at the port of Buffalo, New York, alone in 1866 were about 1,500,000 tons, and the lumber received at Chicago, Illinois, were about 400,000 tons, whereas the received amount of iron ore at all Lake Erie ports amounted to only 278,976 gross tons. Marquette remained the only port on Lake Superior that shipped iron ore until 1876.

After the war, advancement was rapid. The Cleveland Iron Mining Company's dock was 30 feet (9.1 m) above the lake level and was originally built with 29 schooner pockets and 6 steam boat pockets but, by 1872, had been extended an additional 350 feet (110 m), providing 54 additional pockets. During the 1873 season, the total tonnage of iron ore shipped from the port of Marquette was 1,175,000 tons.

As additional ranges (the Gogebic, Menominee East, and Menominee West) began to be developed, with the acceleration of the US as an industrial power, other (primarily Lake Superior) ports also got ore docks. For example, Ashland, Wisconsin, the natural port for the Gogebic Range, had three docks by 1916, the first built by the Milwaukee, Lake Shore and Western Railway in 1884-1885. It was 1,400 feet (430 m) long, with 234 pockets, and four tracks on the dock, and could hold 25,000 tons of ore.

The natural port for the Menominee East range was Escanaba, Michigan; the first docks there were built in 1865.