sweeperguy
Active member
Wondering why, the Keweenaw Peninsula is not Keweenaw Island? It is surrounded by water on all sides.
Keweenaw
- Thread starter sweeperguy
- Start date
Before the white man came, the waterway was not completely open. In fact, the word Keweenaw roughly translates to "place of portage" in Ojibway. So it was the area that needed to be portaged if one were to travel from one end of the waterway to the other. It was dredged and made navigatable by the US Gov. when mining started kicking into high gear.
-John
-John
Same for the shipping canal in Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin. Man-made back when this country did Big Things. Probably wouldn't happen today, too many special interests, rare bugs, frogs, etc.
BigSix
Active member
Gary, you may remember when they widened Hwy. 57 from Green Bay to Sturgeon Bay from 2 to 4 lanes, they stopped all construction for a couple of months because someone found a type of snail that only lives on the Niagara Escarpment! LOL! And the Niagara Escarpment is 600 miles long!
I do recall that. They had to relocate all the snails and the snails didn't want to go. Blocking a four lane highway? Git-R-Done!
More history
the federal government acquired it in 1891 for $350,000.
On March 3, 1871, Congress allocated $14,000 for rebuilding the lighthouse at Eagle River, but when a new light there was deemed unnecessary, the Lighthouse Board received authorization in 1873 to use the money for a lighthouse “at the entrance to Portage Lake ship-canal.” A deed to a roughly one-acre site on the western side of the entrance to the canal from Lake Superior was obtained in March 1874,
During the summer of 1889, Keeper William McGue discovered a cache of copper knives and spear points while digging out a tree stump on the lighthouse grounds. The artifacts, which provide clear evidence that Native Americans were aware of the vast copper deposits on Keweenaw Peninsula, were later purchased by the Chicago Natural History Museum.
Work on widening the entrance between the breakwaters by eighty feet was completed in 1949, and the following year, the current light, known as the Keweenaw Waterway Upper Entrance Light, was established atop a square, white tower that has a focal plane of eighty-two feet. This tower is similar to those erected at Conneaut, Ohio, Port Washington, Wisconsin, and Indiana Harbor, Indiana in the mid-1930s.
the federal government acquired it in 1891 for $350,000.
On March 3, 1871, Congress allocated $14,000 for rebuilding the lighthouse at Eagle River, but when a new light there was deemed unnecessary, the Lighthouse Board received authorization in 1873 to use the money for a lighthouse “at the entrance to Portage Lake ship-canal.” A deed to a roughly one-acre site on the western side of the entrance to the canal from Lake Superior was obtained in March 1874,
During the summer of 1889, Keeper William McGue discovered a cache of copper knives and spear points while digging out a tree stump on the lighthouse grounds. The artifacts, which provide clear evidence that Native Americans were aware of the vast copper deposits on Keweenaw Peninsula, were later purchased by the Chicago Natural History Museum.
Work on widening the entrance between the breakwaters by eighty feet was completed in 1949, and the following year, the current light, known as the Keweenaw Waterway Upper Entrance Light, was established atop a square, white tower that has a focal plane of eighty-two feet. This tower is similar to those erected at Conneaut, Ohio, Port Washington, Wisconsin, and Indiana Harbor, Indiana in the mid-1930s.