Marquette

LS&I Dock, Marquette. The ship in the background is Lee A. Tregurtha. 1990, I believe. Camera: Minolta 110 Zoom SLR

Marquette has two ore docks; the long-abandoned downtown dock and the Upper Harbor (commonly called Presque Isle, or LS&I) dock pictured here. This is a grainy picture, but it shows good detail about the operation of this old gravity dock. As you can see, there are excellent vantages for watching that labor at this dock. The photo dates from around 1990. When the Lake Superior and Ishpeming Railroad built the Presque Isle dock in 1912, this was a state-of-the-art structure. It's now well past its prime, but it's a great place to watch ships. And trains. Camera: Minolta Freedom 100

Downtown Marquette, photographed from a tour boat in--well, I think it was 1990. I'd planned to write an essay about this harbor's industrial history, but that will have to wait. I do want to mention that the trestle at the left side of the photo, which leads to the old downtown ("South Shore") iron ore dock, was removed a few years back. ( Andy Larsen has pictures , of course.) The dock remains, and the city's continuing to reclaim the harbor. Camera: Minolta Freedom 100

Photo taken on the main harbor's breakwater at Marquette, in August, 'round 'bout 1990. We were taking the long way home from a weekend in Two Harbors, Minnesota. Looks like Dick's about to take a photo of the old downtown ore dock. Neither of us is very good at portraits, from either end of the lens; moveover, if either is carrying a camera, generally we're both carrying two. Regardless, this one came out well....

This is the "C" shaft at Cliffs Shaft Mine in Ishpeming. The guy in the lower left corner--I think his name's John--is a retired Cleveland Cliffs engineer who now volunteers at the museum. An interesting and informative guide, I must say. The tour's basically of the surface workings, which are better-preserved but less interesting than at Painesdale, and (far) more compact than those at Calumet. All the transportation periphernalia is gone, and much of the equipment went elsewhere when the mine closed. The main buildings remain. Joan and I were the entire tour group. Never took a mine tour with a group of two, before.

This very pretty little Methodist church is a few yards from Republic Mine. This photo was taken late on a cold Saturday evening in June of 1992. The ladies in the photo were preparing the church for a celebration (my memory again fails to retain the details) the next morning. Had a nice chat with the ladies, who invited me to attend the celebration/service. They were a little embarrassed because of the cardboard covering the flowers, but you've really got to protect the garden when the thermometer's about to drop through the floor.

Republic Mine, from the overlook platform in Republic, Michigan , 'round about 1990. Andy Larsen's website has a very similar photo dated July, 1992. (I have dozens of versions of this photograph, taken mostly in the late 80s and early 90s. I suspect that Andy has hundreds.) Republic Mine was originally opened in 1872 as an underground operation, and continued to operate as a shaft mine until 1926. Cleveland Cliffs '* open pit operation began in the late 1950s; they stopped the mining in 1982. For a decade and a half the pit looked more or less like this--as though they'd blown the supper whistle one evening and never came back. At the time this photo was taken, Cliffs* was claiming that the Republic still contained enough ore for another fifty years' mining effort, which they were holding in reserve until another day. I presume that to still be true. As Terraserver's 1998 aeriel photo of the mine shows , the pit was only a few yards from the Michigamme River. In the late 1990s, CCI* stopped whatever was keeping the flood away from the pit and the mine began to fill. Andy has a wonderful sequence of photos showing this occurring. Andy's Republic Mine pages are wonderful. I particularly like this set of photographs . *CCI, Cleveland Cliffs, Cliffs--all the same....

Interlake's freighter Elton Hoyt 2nd (the name's sort of a pun; this is the second ship named after Elton Hoyt II) takes on a load of iron ore at Marquette's Presque Isle dock, Michigan's Upper Peninsula, on a glorious day in 1998. The ore jennies atop the dock are pretty impressive. This ship now sails as Michicoten.

Presque Isle Park, Marquette, Michigan.