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Sault Ste. Marie, 1853-1854 and After $21.50 TO BUILD A CANAL Sault Ste. Marie, 1853-1854 and After John N. Dickinson Nature has surrounded Lake Superior with immense and valuable forests, and has placed near its shores rich lodes of copper and, in the famed Mesabi Range, the world's largest and most accessible deposits of iron ore. But Na­ ture has also, by some quirk of geology and accident of geography, caused Lake Superior to have an elevation twenty-one feet higher than that of Lake Huron, into which it flows, and has connected the two by a river that, though sixty-three miles in over-all length, completes the drop in elevation in a stretch of precipitous rapids three-fourths of a mile long and a quarter of a mile wide, down which rushes 74,000 cubic feet of water per second as Superior races into Huron. The story of the construction of a bypass to this formidable natural barrier to the free passage of raw mate­ rials from the American Midwest to the great commercial centers of the eastern United States and beyond is the subject of this reveal­ ing and entertaining book. Traders who visited the area that the French had dubbed the Sault Ste. Marie had, as early as the eighteenth century, discerned the need to build a canal to circumvent the falls in the St. Mary's River, and one, of a sort, was indeed already in operation in the days of George Washington. A far more efficient waterway than this primitive expedient was clearly required, however, if the iron ore so abundant in Minnesota and Michigan was to join the coal and limestone of Ohio and Penn­ sylvania in the mills and furnaces surrounding the lower Great Lakes; and in 1853, after years of legislative haggling and political maneuver­ ing, construction of the St. Mary's Falls Canal was at last to begin. Two years later, on June 18, 1855, in the wake of labor disputes, epi­ demics, scandals, lawsuits, jeopardized careers, disrupted schedules, and constant financial difficulties, the steamship Illinois (Continued on back flap) TO BUILD A CANAL Miami University, through an arrangement with the Ohio State University Press initiated in 1975, publishes works of original scholarship, fiction, and poetry. The responsibility for receiving and reviewing manuscripts is invested in an Editorial Board comprised of Miami University faculty. TO BUILD A CANAL Sault Ste. Marie, 1853-1854 and After BY JOHN N. DICKINSON Published for Miami University By the Ohio State University Press Copyright © 1981 by Miami University All Rights Reserved. Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data Dickinson, John N To build a canal Bibliography: p. Includes index. 1. Sault Sainte Marie Canal—History. I. Title. TC625.S2D53 386'.47'0977491 80-27693 ISBN 0-8142-0309-4 TO MARJORIE Contents Foreword xi Preface xvii 1. The Years of Frustration, 1839-1850 3 2. Failure of State Financing and an Act of Congress 19 3. Rushed Plans and Hurried Estimates 31 4. Legislation and a Contract 45 5. Complacency, 1853 59 6. Courting Disaster, 1854 70 7. The Treacherous Editor 86 8. Precarious Financing 96 9. The Final Push 102 10. Counting the Cost and Operating the Canal 121 11. The Canal Company Lands 137 12. Land for Sale 159 Epilogue 168 CONTENTS Appendix 173 Notes 175 Bibliography 193 Index 201 Illustrations 1. Replica of North West Company Lock 4 2. Erastus Corning I 33 3. Charles G. Harvey, 1884 34 4. Sault Canal 42-43 5. Steamer E. Ward Leaving the Locks 132 6. Lock at Lower Entrance in 1855 133 Maps 1. Iron Ore Claims in Marquette County 146 2. Copper and Lumber Claims on the Keweenaw Penninsula—1 147 3. Copper Claims on the Keweenaw Penninsula—2 148 4. Copper Claims on the Keweenaw Penninsula—3 149 5. Copper Claims on the Keweenaw Penninsula—4 150 6. Copper Claims on the Keweenaw Penninsula—5 151 t MAPS 7. Lumber Claims in Mackinac County 152 8. Lumber Claims in Alger County and Northern Schoolcraft County 153 9. Lumber Claims in Delta County and Southern Schoolcraft County 154 Foreword As in the affairs of men, there is an element of chance in the natural geography of our earth that can be favorable, or fatal, or merely adverse to man's use of his environment. Geologic chance surrounded Lake Superior with immense and valuable forests and placed near its shores rich lodes of copper and the world's largest and most accessible iron ore deposit, in the famed Mesabi Range. In the modern era a once unlikely resource, billions of tons of granitic rock yielding tiny particles of embedded iron, has given rise to the multibillion-dollar business of taconite extraction, now basic to the steel economy of Canada and the United States. A quirk of geology and geography caused Lake Superior to have an elevation twenty-one feet higher than the level of Lake Huron, into which Superior flows. The two lakes are connected by the St. Mary's River. Another accident of nature caused this river not to flow by a gradual gradient over its sixty-three mile length (or seventy-five miles by the longest measurement of another channel). The drop occurs in a precipitous rapids, in a stretch of water only three-fourths of a mile long and a quarter of a mile wide, where the 74,000 cubic feet per second flow of Lake Superior hurtles toward Lake Huron in a welter of rock ledges and turbulent water that no canoe or ship could traverse. These quirks of geology, geography, and hydrology have had enormous political, economic, and engineering consequences, which in turn led to the writing of this treatise by Dr. John N. Dickinson, whose research has added much to the literature of the phenomenon of Sault Ste. Marie. The early French explorers called the connecting river between the lakes St. Mary's River (Ste. Marie in French). What we call the falls or rapids of the St. Mary's River the French identified as "Sault xii FOREWORD Ste. Marie." The literal translation of the French word sault is jump; thus did the French fur traders identify the need for their early flotillas of canoes or bateaux to make the "jump" up and over (or down and over) the stretch of white water that neither they nor the Indians could overcome except by portaging around it. As the French trade routes became established, reaching from Lake Superior and western Canada all the way back to Montreal, the early Jesuits devised a timber flume to facilitate the dragging of boats and cargo around the white water of the Sault. In 1797 the North West Company, trade concessionaire for the region, built the first lock on the Canadian side of the rapids. It was thirty-eight feet long and nine feet wide, and had a lift of nine feet and a draft of thirty inches. It served for seventeen years, until destroyed by American troops in 1814 on one of the American incursions of the War of 1812. This lock, which disappeared, was not rebuilt; and its foundations were not rediscovered until 1889, seventy-five years later. After 1814 the portage process around the Sault Ste. Marie rapids had to be resumed if Lake Superior was to be linked with the other four lakes. In 1825 the opening of the Erie Canal brought flood tides of settlers and immigrants over the lakes to the rich new territories of Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. In addition to wheat, timber, and furs, rich lodes of copper and iron had been located in the Superior region. With trade and population blossoming, and with Lakes Erie, Huron, and Michigan burgeoning economically, Lake Superior still lay inaccessible, twenty-one feet higher than Huron and with no solution to that three-quarter-mile stretch of white water. Steam vessels succeeded the canoe and the bateau and began to overtake the schooner. In 1827 the first steamer, the Henry Clay, reached the St. Mary's River but could go no farther. Aboard it were General Lewis Cass, soon to be governor of Michigan, and General Winfield Scott, later to achieve fame as "Old Fuss and Feathers" in the war with Mexico and as chief of staff of the U. S. Army at the beginning of the Civil War. They were en route to inspect the forts west of Lake Michigan. Cargo from the Clay, and from other ships of the era, was unloaded and portaged around the rapids to the ships available for Lake Superior navigation. With the phenomenal success of the Erie Canal and the FOREWORD xiii blossoming of the new western territories, there developed a classic case in the history of American political confrontations. As in the recent example of the St. Lawrence Seaway, the eastern "establish­ ment" of ports and trade centers feared loss of population as well as economic competition from the new territories. Plank roads and canals were wanted everywhere in this prerailroad era, and federal aid was sought as avidly then as now. For several decades the "Doctrine of Internal Improvements" was the battleground in Congress between East and West. It was finally resolved when Congress began to appropriate monies to improve the harbors of pioneer cities on the lakes and to grant lands as well as money for a variety of public improvements. The craze for local canals and plank roads collapsed as rails reached the West in the 1850s. A towering figure on the federal political scene for decades was Henry Clay (1777-1852).

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