Escanaba's Docks

Escanaba's Docks. . , At your immediate left, the first dock you see is the decaying Chicago and Northwestern Railway Dock, locally called the Merchant's Dock. Most of Escanaba's freight and passengers to and from the South and East came and went over this dock before the railroad was connected with Green Bay, Wisconsin in the 1870's. Another commercial dock owned by the I. Stephenson Lumber Company stood approximately where you are now standing. , , The next dock North, to your left, is the coal dock of the C. Reiss Coal Company of Green Bay, Wisconsin. , , Most of the activity in Escanaba's harbor today takes place at the Chicago and Northwestern iron ore dock, which you can see in the middle distance at your left. Pelletized ore, which stands in large mounds of thousands of tons back of the docks is transported by conveyor belt into the iron ore boats at the docks. Over eight million tons of ore are shipped annually to Illinois, Indiana, Ohio and the Detroit area. This is more tonnage than shipped from the old wooden docks, which numbered six at one time. In the days before steamboats were common on the Great Lakes, it was said by pioneer settlers that the Escanaba harbor was "a forest of masts" waiting for dockage. , , Farther North, not easily discernible unless a lake tanker is unloading, is a terminal for high-test airplane fuel used at K. I. Sawyer Air Force Base near Gwinn, about fifty miles North. , , At the head of Little Bay de Noc, where the bay narrows, is the City of Gladstone and next to it, Kipling. Gladstone at one time had its own ore dock and a grain elevator. Kipling is an oil terminal for several oil companies. , , At your right across the bay, is the Stonington Peninsula, first settled, after the Indians, by predominately Scandinavian farmers and fishermen. The low-lying limestone you can see are strata of Ordovician limestone laid by tropical seas between two hundred and three hundred million years ago. Fossils to be found over there are brachiopods, ostrocods, and trilobite fragments. , , Just off Sand Point to your immediate right is a buoy marking the sunken hulk of the steamer Nahant which burned in the Escanaba harbor, drifted and sank in that area.