Over fifty years before the opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway (1959), I was building lighthouses and related engineering projects in some of the most isolated regions of the Great Lakes and along their connecting waterways. Even in those years, the waterborne commerce on this inland freshwater sea was of great magnitude – although commerce was restricted to eight months of the year because the connecting waterways were frozen in solid ice during the winter, effectively terminating the operation of the ships. During those eight months, however, there was almost a continuous procession of cargo vessels, both downbound with iron ore, wheat and other products of the northwest, and upbound with coal, steel products and other cargos from the central and eastern states. These ships followed two main feeder routes...from northern Lake Huron, one through Lake Michigan to Chicago and other ports, and the other to the Lake Superior ports of northern Minnesota, Wisconsin and northern Michigan, via the St. Mary's River and through the locks of Sault Ste. Marie.
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