Superior, Wisconsin - History

History

The first-known inhabitants of what is now Douglas County were Mound Builders. These people appeared on the shores of Lake Superior sometime after the latest glacier receded. They mined copper in the Minong Range and at Manitou Falls on the Black River. They pounded this metal into weapons, implements, and ornaments, which were later found buried in mounds with their dead. Their civilization was eventually overrun by other tribes, mainly of Muskhogean and Iroquois stock, and disappeared as a distinct culture in late prehistoric American times.

About the time of the European arrival, the Duluth–Superior region transitioned from being predominately Dakota to being predominately Ojibwa/Chippewa. In the Ojibwa oral history, Spirit Island in the Saint Louis River was their "Sixth Stopping Place" where the northern and southern divisions of Ojibwa nation came together in their westward migration. The City of Superior in the Ojibwe language is called Gete-oodena, meaning "Old Town" as the Lake Superior Chippewa population center of the Ojibwa later moved east toward Madeline Island, the "Seventh Stopping Place", and the Mississippi Chippewa towards Brainerd, Minnesota (thus calling both Brainerd and Bayfield, Wisconsin as Oshki-oodena ("New Town") in the Ojibwe language).

The first-known Europeans to visit the area were the French. In 1618, Étienne Brûlé, a voyager for Champlain, coasted along the south shore of Lake Superior where he met the Ojibwa. Upon returning to Quebec, he carried back some copper specimens and a glowing account of the region. In 1632, Champlain’s map appeared showing “Lac Superior de Tracy” as Lake Superior and the lower end shore as “Fond du Lac.” Soon after, fur trading companies established settlements, while missionaries came bringing with them the first touches of European civilization.

For more than a century, the Hudson's Bay Company, followed by the Northwestern Fur Company in 1787 and later, the John Jacob Astor Fur Company, maintained trading posts with the Native Americans. With the coming of settlement, however, the voyager and fur trader faded into the misty twilight of a romantic and historic past.

Douglas County lies on one of the major water highways used by early travelers and voyagers of inland America. This water trail, the Bois Brule–St. Croix River Portage Trail, was the most convenient connecting link between Lake Superior and the Mississippi River. The Bois Brule and St. Croix River systems were only separated by a short portage over the Eastern Continental Divide near Solon Springs, Wisconsin. The northward traveler used this water trail to take him to Lake Superior, while the downstream traveler could use it to go southwest to the Gulf of Mexico, unhindered by portages, by using the St. Croix and Mississippi Rivers. This waterway was also an important route in the Wisconsin fur trade, particularly when the French War with the Fox Indians closed the more southern routes. Spurred by the prospect of lucrative shipping and iron ore industry, businessmen from Chicago and St. Paul laid claim to the site which became the city of Superior, and plans began for the plotting of a great city

The first log cabin in Superior was erected in September 1853 on the banks of the Nemadji River, paralleling the breaking of ground for the locks and ship canal at Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan. This brought the dawning of a new age for the infant community, which was incorporated as a city on September 6, 1854. Immediately there was eagerness for a railroad from Lake Superior to the Pacific Coast. This was later realized with construction of the Northern Pacific Railway, and the dream of a rail and water highway from coast to coast was born. In 1889, the booming settlement at the Head of the Lakes would soon be named the county seat for Wisconsin’s 4th largest county. Between 1890 and 1920, the city was heavily settled by migrants from the eastern United States as well as immigrants from over 15 countries, including England, Scotland, Ireland, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Belgium, Germany, Austria, Hungary, and Croatia. Named for Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois, famed rival of Abraham Lincoln, Douglas County became the site where its largest city and county seat, Superior, would be located, and money was pumped into the city’s shipping and railway industries.