Archive Dive: Wisconsin’s Fight to Close Duluth’s Ship Canal

Duluth’s tourism industry began with and is hinged upon the city’s iconic Aerial Bridge, but what is often lost on visitors is that if there was not a ship canal to cross, there would be no bridge. If the people of Superior, Wisconsin, in the 1870s had their way, the canal would not exist. Read about Superior’s and the state of Wisconsin’s battles to close the canal, which included building the dike pictured below, here.

The dike that stretched from Rice’s Point to Minnesota Point in the 1870s, created to resolve a legal dispute between Duluth and Superior over the digging of the Duluth Ship Canal. (Image: Lake Superior Maritime Collection)