Soo Locks of the Great LakesAug 17, 2010
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Gates opening - sailboat is down.
Sailboat is up.
Freighter in locks..now up.
| We started our day at the Soo Locks in downtown Sault Ste Marie. The locks allow ships to travel between Lake Superior and the Lower Great Lakes. They pass an average of 10,000 ships per year. That's only in the warmer months. The locks are closed during the winter from Jan-Mar. There is a 21 foot drop between Lake Superior and Lake Huron. Next, we went to the "Valley Camp Freighter Museum". They turned the freighter into a museum and you can also tour the entire ship. This ship was launched in 1917 as the "Louis W Hill" for the National Steel Corp. hauling iron ore and coal. It sailed under this name for 38 years. It was sold to Wilson Marine Transit Co. and renamed the "Valley Camp". At all of the museums you will see something from the "Edmund Fitzgerald". The Edmund Fitzgerald was nicknamed "the Fitz". It was launched on June 8, 1958. In 1975 while traveling on Lake Superior during a gale, she sank in Canadian waters appx. 17 miles from Whitefish Bay at a depth of 530'. It's crew of 29 perished with no bodies recovered. The disaster was the subject of Gordon Lightfoot's 1976 hit song "The wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald". Another tidbit of info....the Ojibwa indians called Lake Superior "Gichigami" (means big lake). Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote the name as "Gitche Gumee" in "The Song of Hiawatha. After the museum, we went to the top of the "Tower of History" to the observation deck. It was really cool to see all the locks, the downtown area, and Canada on the other side of the water. |
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