Duluth and Superior

There are two cities here, Duluth, MN, along the side of this ridge,

and Superior, WI, which occupies much flatter land to the east.

They share this huge harbor,

which is formed by the longest fresh water sand bar in the world. We are staying on the western end of the bar, Park Point, Duluth. The other day we drove around to see the eastern end, Wisconsin Point.

This end has no houses, just beaches, and I was surprised to find a white pine woods.

The cut here is unbridged. This is the only natural entrance to the harbor.

It does have jetties and lights and is navigable. Before the Army Corps of Engineers added concrete piers and jetties the entrance was shallow and difficult to navigate.

Today I took a picture of the sand bar from our western end of the beach. If you enlarge it and look closely you can see the white lighthouse at the natural opening way out on the arc of the bar.

Duluth wanted a canal on their end of the bar, as the natural entrance favored Superior. The canal was dug in the fall of 1870 and finished in the spring of 1871. The Army Corps of Engineers warned that the change in water flow made by the canal might harm the natural entrance. Duluth went ahead and started digging. Superior filed an injunction. The digging moved faster than the courts; the first boat went through the canal on May 6, 1871 and Superior’s suit was heard in June. As things turned out, the canal did not harm the natural entrance, but it did provide a more direct entry.

Today, the canal and the Aerial Lift Bridge define Duluth, which has a population of almost 88,000.

Superior has some incredibly large factories on their side of the harbor, but Duluth snagged the most business and the most growth and Superior’s population is 26,600, less a third of Duluth.

Superior does have a Municipal Forest, something I’ve never seen before. There’s a great disc golf course there.

We played there a couple of times.

It also has a new nominee to my tree hall of fame! This tree has a full sized vertical tree growing up from a lone horizontal branch that survived some horrific damage to the main trunk. Amazing!

We’re happy to be just a few blocks from the canal. The Aerial Lift Bridge is fascinating. See the huge chains that raise and lower the bridge deck and counterweights.

This is directly under the bridge when it’s down. You can see the steel deck immediately above me and then the bottoms of the girders across the span.

Tuesday evening we saw the American Mariner come in.

The bridge doesn’t always raise to full height, but it did for this ship. She is a 740 foot long bulk carrier. The longest ship now sailing the Great Lakes is 1,013 feet long, but this was still an impressive sight.

Then last evening a whole group of sailboats was gathered at our end of the harbor. A local told me it was race night. Suddenly they all headed towards the bridge and I realized the bridge was going to go up to let them into the lake.

Matey and I made it just in time to see the last boat go under the bridge,

and the whole group go out between the piers.

We may be in the city, but there’s a lot of interesting and beautiful things around us.