Ore docks...once magnificent, soon to be gone.

Alas, while perusing the excellent blog known as the Retread Ranger Station, I came across this story of an old ore dock once used to load iron ore into lake freighters back in the day when Great Lakes shipping was alive and well.


Sadly, the thought of the destruction of this unique historical structure brought to mind a similar ore dock in Marquette, Michigan which is facing an uncertain fate of it's own. Ironically, this one too was once owned by the Soo Line. It also loaded the giant ore freighters and sent iron ore pellets from the Northern Michigan iron mines to the hungry blast furnaces of the Ford Motor Company's Rouge Steel plant.

This one, the City of Marquette claims, might be made into condos. Yeah, OK. I believe that. How about you? I'm betting that as soon as no one's looking, it gets wired for demolition and dropped into the lake or otherwise salvaged for scrap.

The Marquette dock is over a thousand feet long and has four railroad tracks atop it. It's no longer connected to the shore as the concrete structure that was once it's base is already gone, but I'll never forget the thrill and the historic sense that I got from "trespassing" on it almost two decades ago. It was connected to the shore then, and it was even watched over by a none-too-attentive security guard, who finally woke up and yelled at me to leave just as I was in the process of leaving, having been on the structure for nearly an hour already and exploring it's ore chutes and cavernous interior. It's bad enough that the Great Lakes shipping is all but gone but do they really have to remove even these remaining vestiges of what was once a grand era?

Sigh...