The Ore Docks in Superior’s Allouez neighborhood, circa 1900. (Image: Xcomm.)
On this day in Superior, Wisconsin, in 1892, the first train load of iron ore from the Missabe Range reached the ore docks in Allouez. The Duluth, Missabe & Northern Railway train left Mountain Iron earlier in the day. Duluth’s ore docks were still under construction, so when the train and its 4,245-ton load of ore reached the Zenith City it transferred to the railway of the Duluth & Winnepeg Railway and crossed to Superior, arriving at the ore docks in Allouez. The journey took 18 hours. The load was ultimately divided into two parcels and sent east, where it was “to be divided among four or five furnaces.” Before the ore was shipped out, 20 tons of it were placed in car No. 342 and, the next day, was sent to Duluth’s new Union Depot—officially the first load of Missabe ore in Duluth. The train from Superior arrived at 11:15 a.m., but a crowd had gathered to see the ore hours earlier. The ore was left on display at the track’s end, under the train shed, for several weeks thereafter. (Ore from the Vermillion Range had been shipped to dock in Two Harbors since the 1880s.)
Thanks, Grant! Actually, Duluth’s first ore dock was under construction in 1884, but Charlemagne Tower sent his Vermilion ore to Agate Bay, today’s Two Harbors. So it is likely that the 1893 construction of the dock was aided by the fact that part of it was already there.. The first load of ore arrived July 22, 1893.
The Duluth extension of the D M & N Railway from Columbia Junction at Stony Brook did not occur until the early part of 1893. Similarly, the first ore dock built in Duluth began early in 1893. Alfred Merritt was President of the D.M.& N. when the 26 mile extension was built to Duluth. The ore dock construction took place in 1893. How both those large projects were completed in such a short time is amazing to me. It took large crews and materials to complete both of them. And some damn good management to boot!
Again,I enjoy your history and have subscribed. Thanks to Tom Wheeler and my nephew Brian Bergson for alerting me to your website!
Hi Tony –
No problem. Actually what I had to say was very simplified. Railroads actually had very detailed blending matrixes they used to assure the right iron concentration of ore got loaded into each dock pocket. Those are amazing documents that show precisely how each car load needed to be placed front to rear on the dock just above the boat, which types of ore needed to go into each pocket first, second, third and fourth. And often the entire boat load got topped off with carloads discharged through empty ore dock pockets so that the iron ore fell directly from the railroad car into the boat without being held in the dock first. This was called topping off or speed loading. I’ve been on dock trains on both the Allouez (GN-BN) and Two Harbors (DMIR) ore docks when this operation was going on. It’s quite exciting to be standing there next to a railroad car when the doors are opened underneath it allowing 70 tons of ore to plummet nearly a hundred feet straight down into the boat. You didn’t want to slip and fall or you were a goner!
Things became even more precarious when taconite pellets started getting loaded on the old gravity docks too. The pellets are like marbles. They are easy to step on and losing your balance high above Lake Superior is a very bad place to be. In the old days the men would wear safety harnesses to keep from being loaded into a boat by accident. The Allouez dock even went so far as to add a crisscross of rails at the top of each pocket to prevent men from being swept into the boat holds. I have pictures of all of these things. Bottom line, this entire process and all of these negotiated work hazards are what made it fairly easy for the steel mill to make sure each boat load of ore met the proper requirements to produce certain kinds of metals. When we look at this process in any kind of detail, even one as simplistic as my humble explanation, it’s easy to realize that an improper load of iron ore in a boat could result in a much poorer grade of steel if anyone in the chain of ore production didn’t do their job properly. If the guys at the mines didn’t sample the ore properly (test it, grade it for iron concentration) you’d have the wrong ore going into the cars. If the guys who had to fulfill steel company orders asked for the wrong stuff the road trains would bring down improper ores for sorting at the yards. If the guys at the yards didn’t switch the cars correctly you’d have the wrong ore going up to the docks. If the guys who loaded the docks did it in the wrong order you’d have the wrong ore going in the boats. It all needed to work right in order for the mills to be able to produce the steels the rest of the world depended on for manufacturing.
It was all quite an amazing, complicated process. So it was never a case of all the GN ore going to Allouez or all the NP ore going to Hill Avenue Yard or all the Missabe ore going to Duluth or Two Harbors. It didn’t work that way. Although most of the ore went to the road who hauled it much of it was interchanged too. This became more important as time when on as the raw ore stores became exhausted. It was always about special orders for each and every boat that came into port. When you look at ore train pictures take a good look at the ore cars behind the engines or sitting in the rail yards. When you see SOO cars at Allouez or GN cars behind Missabe locomotives these are strong indicators that you are looking at interchange ore that is either coming from or going to those roads so that they could each fulfill that week’s iron ore orders for the steel companies that their ore docks served. Kind of like what drive up restaurants used to be, that is what those ore docks are. Drive ups for the steel companies. Place your order, drive up in your boat, get your ore, and take it home. The ore docks are just giant drive ups for making steel. Somebody ordered the ore in advance, it was mined and brought to the dock, then it was blended, loaded and transported to the mills for its ultimate purpose – making steel.
Cheers!
Jeff Lemke, Twin Ports Rail History, Inc.
Keith: I’m so new to this web stuff that I am not even sure! Meanwhile, you can email me at info @ zenithcity.com and I will be happy to put the pic and any accompanying text in another reply to this post.
Thanks guys, this is exactly the information I was looking for. Regarding that old trestle – unfortunately, the remaining pilings were removed last winter as part of an environmental cleanup effort of that area (Radio Tower bay cleanup). However, I have an interesting photo that I took in 2010 and other information on that trestle that I’d be happy to share. Tony, is there a mechanism for uploading information to this site?
Thanks, Jeff–I knew we could count on you for a detailed answer!
Hi Tony,
Here are my quick thoughts on the subject. Jon is right on the money about where the old line crossed the water near Oliver Bridge. It’s on the opposite side of the road north of the steel bridge. When the water levels are low you can still see the pilings in the water at that location. You’ll have to climb the hill and walk through a back yard or two to get there. I’ve photographed the pilings as recently as ten years ago. The Mesabi ore came from the Mesabi Range. Great Northern ore was headquartered out of Kelly Lake, MN. right in the middle of the Mesabi Iron Range. This was a perfect location for them to assemble the long ore trains that ran to Allouez. The ore handled by DM&N, D&IR and later DM&IR came from all across of Mesabi Range as well as the Vermillion Range farther to the east. Some of those ores were shipped via the ore docks in Duluth while others were handled through the port of Two Harbors. Soo Line and Northern Pacific ore came from the Cuyuna Iron Range near Grand Rapids. Those trains ran on the NP with Soo Line crews operating them. And most of that ore, in modern times, was shipped over the old NP ore dock near Superior East End. The Soo Line had a wooden ore dock in Superior but that burned down while they were making it longer. After it was destroyed the Soo and NP agreed to handle their ore over just the NP dock. I have quite a few images on my Twin Ports Time Machine Vol. 2 CD-ROM covering this operation on the Cuyuna Iron Range. What most people don’t realize is that the steel companies needed particular blends of ore to produce the metals they created. That couldn’t usually be done with any one ore from any one mine. So all of the area railroads interchanged (exchanged) ore from their mines with each other at predetermined interchange points. That way the various ores could be pre-sorted in the ore yards at Allouez (GN), Hill Ave. Yard (NP-SOO), Proctor (DMN-DMIR), and Two Harbors (DIR-DMIR). From there cars would be switched into strings of different ores that when combined would produce the proper metals in the blast furnaces on the lower Great Lakes. The ore docks themselves are where the ore was blended to create the right mix of iron ore. Several car loads of different ores were dumped into each dock pocket. Then when those pockets were emptied into a lake boat that blending would be appropriate for what the steel companies ordered.
You see, this is where all of this iron ore business actually started. The steel companies would ask for so many tons of a particular blend of iron ore with a certain concentration of iron. The railroads would ask the mining companies to provide that ore. When they didn’t get what they needed to fulfill orders from the steel companies they called the other railroads to find what they needed to create the right final blend of ore. The ore was mined, moved to the yards, sorted, and delivered to the railroads that needed it. All of these ore trains crisscrossed through town to get to the proper ore dock. Then the final staging was done before the cars were shoved onto the ore docks where they were blended in the pockets then transferred via gravity into the holds of waiting ore boats. And if the boat had to actually wait for the right ore to get loaded then somebody was in big trouble. Each shipping season each ore boat could make only so many trips back and forth across the Great Lakes with ore for the steel mills. Any delay at the ore dock could translate into missing a trip at the end of the season. That cost everyone money.
Iron ore was a lot of work. And that’s why the operation ran 24/7 for 100 years with thousands of men involved in the process. Shipping taconite is so much simpler today. It’s basically one predetermined iron content product in one train that goes to one dock for one steel company. There are several different blends of taconite across the Mesabi Range today but it’s nothing like the heydays of iron ore in Duluth-Superior.
Hope this information helps. Cheers!
Jeff Lemke, Twin Ports Rail History, Inc.
Thanks, John! This is just the kind of information sharing / reader involvement I had hoped would be a byproduct of the site.
Actually, the ore cars were transfered between the DM&N and the D&W north of Proctor at a site known as “Columbia Jct.” From there the D&W hauled the ore to Allouez, WI via its own line around the hills of present day Gary New Duluth crossing its own trestle across the St. Louis River. This trestle was located just up-stream from today’s Oliver Bridge that the CN uses for crossing. The D&W trestle was removed in 1901 when the railroad was taken over by the Great Northern.
Tony,
Is there any information on where exactly this train crossed into Wisconsin? I believe it must have crossed in New Duluth and then via the Superior Belt Line and Terminal (SBLT) railway to the D&W docks at Allouwez. I haven’t been able to confirm that, but I know the D&W had an agreement in place with the SBLT to use 12 miles of its line from New Duluth to Allouez WI.
Let me dig a little deeper, Dave, and get back to you on this. There ere ore docks in Ashland to handle material from the Gogebic Range mines.
Where did the ore that normally went to Alouez come from? The UP?