Cranberry Operation
The low bog lands and surrounding wetlands, small lakes, ponds, and Sand Creek made Vermilion Point ideally suited for cranberry cultivation. By dividing the bogs with earthen walls and damming Sand Creek, workers harvested the cranberries by combing the vines with narrow-tined forks and floating the ripe, buoyant cranberries that were gathered with wide bottomed scoops. The cranberries were transported by flat bottomed boat to a large water wheel on Sand Creek that scooped up them up from a trough and dumped them on a conveyor belt to a mill. After the cranberries were sorted and crated for shipping or processed into cats-up or jelly, they were loaded onto small trolley cars, and hauled down a tramway to Lake Superior where they were loaded onto small boats and then transferred to a steamer waiting offshore. The cranberries were shipped to Chicago, Duluth, and other places on the waterways.
The cranberry operation at Vermilion Point lasted from 1887 to 1932 with the greatest production years occurring between 1888 and 1910. Vermilion Point produced 1,600 bushels of cranberries in 1897. Today the earthen walls still exist but the marshes are flooded by beaver dams on the channels. Cranberries can still be found along the edges of the marshes and wet beach areas.
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