Lake Superior wasn’t even a twinkle in Mother Earth’s eye at this point, but the groundwork (literally the ground) was laid for the lake basin in these times of molten upheaval. It was about a billion years ago that the Midcontinent Rift that extended from near Thunder Bay, Ontario, to Kansas began to split and lava erupted from it. Rumor has it (spread by Minnesota Sea Grant) that had the rift - one of the deepest in the world at 1,250 miles (2,000 km) - continued to expand, Lake Superior would have been Ocean Superior. The rift, still there today under the lake, makes Lake Superior unique among the Great Lakes; the others were not born of volcanic ripping. Massive glaciers (a mile or more thick) coming and going from 1 million to 10,000 years ago did the final scraping out of the Great Lakes, leaving behind the lakes’ water as they melted and retreated. The glacial lake that predates Lake Superior had a surface level up to 600 feet higher than the present level. Standing on the edge of the Skyline Parkway in Duluth, Minnesota, puts you on that former shoreline.

 

The first permanent human residents showed up on the lake shores just about the same time there were lake shores to show up around. Carbon-dated artifacts in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and Ontario’s Sibley Peninsula place humans on the shores at this time. Little is known about these first cultures, except that they carried shells that meant they either traded in the south or were lake-going tourists from there. The Anishinabeg or Ojibway people, who resided on these shores for thousands of years, call Lake Superior something akin to “the Anishinabeg’s extremely huge waters.” Their culture is much influenced by the lake … and, perhaps, the lake is influenced by them, too.

Okay, okay, a lot went on between 10,000 years ago and 1622, but we only get 20 events so we’re skipping ahead. About this time young Étienne Brûlé and his companion Grenoble passed what they called the Sault de Gaston (now Sault Ste. Marie) onto what they termed la mer douce du nord, the Sweet Sea of the North. This would make Brûlé and his one-named buddy the first Europeans to set foot in or around Lake Superior, according to some. Others argue that Viking paddles cleaved these waters much earlier.

The first full European map of Lake Superior’s shoreline is completed. Hardly a Circle Tour guide, but it no doubt attracted more exploration and travel. Just a note: Jesuit priests were the first to record the name “Supérieur” in the 1647-48 Relations, a history of their activities. A map based on the 1665-67 travels of Jesuits Claude Allouez and Claude Dablon listed the lake as either “Tracy” or “Superior.” Thank goodness the former got lost in the shuffle. Lake Tracy? What kind of name is that for a Great Lake?

 

Fur trading begins here with the cargo delivered to Montreal by Pierre Ésprit Radisson and Médard Chouart, Sieur des Groseilliers after their one-year stint around Lake Superior. The pelts were confiscated because they made the trip without the proper permits (big government goes way back). The seizure of their furs (plus they had to pay a fine) raised the hackles of Radisson and Groseillier, who then took their knowledge to the British and initiated the Hudson Bay Company. The battle between fur companies hastened both exploitation of the lake region’s fur-bearing critters and the arrival of more and more Europeans, mostly voyageurs and priests at first. The companies established a number of posts, perhaps the first by Daniel Greysolon, Sieur du Lhut (or the Scandinavian version: Duluth) in 1679-83 on the Kaministiquia River near the present Thunder Bay. The visiting priests’ names linger: Marquette, Allouez, Baraga.

Commercial mining, which would become an economic giant around the lake, starts with a copper operation near Ontonagon, Michigan, by Louis Denis, Sieur de la Ronde. (Sieur are a lot of sieurs!) Organized taking of copper, however, actually started 5,000 or more years earlier with the people who were probably the cultural ancestors of the Anishinabeg. Copper mined in those early efforts made it to the Atlantic coast and perhaps beyond as far as Egypt. William Burt’s 1844 survey first identified iron ore on the lake’s shores in the Marquette Range in Michigan. There are about eight identified ore districts around the lake. At Minnesota’s Vermilion and Mesabi ranges, mining began in the mid- to late 1800s. Besides iron and copper, Lake Superior harbors a variety of mineral riches that includes silver, zinc, gold and well-known gemstones such as amethyst and diamond. A mineral side show: the 1843 struggle over ownership of a 3,700-pound copper boulder “discovered” in the Ontonagon River. (The Anishinabeg knew it was there all along, but respected it and didn’t feel the need to pick it up and drag it around.) Eventually the boulder ended up in Washington with the federal government having the biggest stick to enforce its claim.

The state of Michigan opens the first lock at Sault Ste. Marie, providing a way to circumvent the 19- to 21-foot (6.4-meter) drop of the lake into St. Marys River through the falls. The steamship Illinois leads the procession through the lock. Actually, a wee Canadian lock had been built for canoes in 1797 or ’98 by the North West Company, but Americans burned it in 1814 in disputes before the Treaty of Ghent. The United States and Canada continued to squabble some. Once the United States forbade use of its locks by Canadian troops headed to squelch a rebellion in Winnipeg. So Canada constructed its own lock in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, in 1895. According to the authors of Superior Under the Shadow of the Gods, the Canadian government got so excited about having a lock (it was the longest then in the world at 274 meters or 900 feet) that the powers put its image on the $4 bill in 1900. Too bad it was a picture of the U.S.lock, not the Canadian lock, a faux pas not corrected until the bill was reissued in 1902 with the true Canadian feat unlocked.

Probably the first lake-area railroad began operating from the Marquette Range to Lake Superior to deliver ore mined there. Railroads made it to the shores in Wisconsin and Minnesota around 1870 and the Canadian Pacific in the mid- to late 1880s, creating crucial links for natural resources from this area to the resource-buying world and for settlers to arrive.

1868

Prospectors discover silver on Silver Islet near Thunder Bay, Ontario, and undertake a mining operation that may not be the most significant on the lake, but is certainly the most mesmerizing. In the thralls of the power of silver, organizers create a mine on this 90-foot-long (27-meter) plot eight feet above the water and fight the lake for 13 years by establishing cribbing and breakwalls of several acres around the islet and hundreds of feet below the surface. But a 10,000-year-old lake can afford to be patient. In 1883-84, after the mine produced $3 million worth of silver and had become a top world producer, Lake Superior evicted the miners from its property by simply turning off the heat; an early freeze stopped shipping and left the mining operation without enough fuel to keep up constant pumping of lake water from the mine shafts, which reached 1,200 feet deep.The shafts are still under the water.

Establishment of what we think were the first national set-aside lands around the lake: The Superior National Forest. Public lands are of great significance to the Lake Superior region, with at least 30 state or provincial parks, more than a dozen state or national forests, almost half a dozen national parks and assorted scenic riverways and wildlife refuges along the shores. 

The United States and Canada sign the Boundary Waters Treaty, recognizing shared interests and establishing the International Joint Commission to administer the treaty and advise the governments. For Lake Superior and the other Great Lakes, as well as other boundary waters, this treaty concedes that a political border does not prevent pollution from flowing into another country. This mission continues, with the 1978 upgraded version of the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement first calling for “zero discharge” of toxic pollutants in the Great Lakes and Lake Superior being chosen later in the 1990s as the test for that principle with a limited number of toxins.

An estimated 500 vessels have wrecked while traversing the waters of Lake Superior, but the loss of the Edmund Fitzgerald and its 29-member crew in November of this year focused international attention on the lake and its sometimes pitiless power. Besides the tragedy itself, the resulting popular ballad “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” by Gordon Lightfoot turned thoughts to the big lake during this modern time just as Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s famous “Song of Hiawatha” in 1855 made “gitche gumi” (actually a mispronunciation of the Ojibway name) internationally familiar.

Establishment of Lake Superior Port Cities Inc. and its magazine, Lake Superior Port Cities, which would grow into Lake Superior Magazine. (Hey, we’re picking the 20, we get to indulge a little!)

1998

Canadian and U.S. governments begin moving toward legislation regarding removal of Lake Superior (and other Great Lakes) waters after a provincial permit is granted (then rescinded) for a request to export 780 million gallons of lake water.

We predict this New Year’s Eve will be significant in its insignificance for Lake Superior, a veteran of about 10 millennial changes. It’s already survived Y1K and a bunch of Y-Ks from the B.C. era. So, we declare Lake Superior Y2K compliant, should anyone ask.

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