Appendix H - Historical Archaeological and ... - CBP.gov

crossings. The bridge follows a similar route across the Sault Ste. Marie Canals and Locks as the
nearby ca. 1880 railroad bridge. Two large-scale bridges are located in Superior, Douglas
County, Wisconsin. These include the 1885 Northern Pacific Drawbridge spanning the St. Louis
Bay and the 1910 State Highway 105/Minnesota State Highway 23 Bridge over the St. Louis
River.
Agriculture
In most of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and Wisconsin’s Lake Superior shore, once the forests
were removed, farming was difficult at best. In spite of being promoted as excellent lands to
encourage people to settle the regions, the sandy soils made an agricultural lifestyle difficult. In
recognition of this, in the State and Federal governments began buying back the lands, and
established publically owned forests. Private property is still found in and around the forests but
for the most part, widespread agriculture practices are limited.
By the late nineteenth century and into the early twentieth century, fruit production began, fueled
by the recognition of microclimates well-suited to pomiculture. These microclimates made it
possible to produce fruit orchards in Bayfield, Wisconsin.
Industry/Manufacturing
Settlement in the Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and in the northern tip of Wisconsin was
facilitated by logging the extensive white pine forests. Lumber companies purchased large
tracks of land, where they established camps to facilitate clear cutting. Logging company
owners earned millions of dollars, and the title of Lumber Baron, in the process.
Raw materials form the basis for some of the major industrial activities of the Upper Peninsula
and northern Wisconsin. Although Native Americans had long been aware of its existence, the
Euroamerican “discovery” of copper in Michigan’s Keweenaw Peninsula drove early settlers to
the region to pursue its extraction. The copper mining industry was active across much of the
northern section of the Upper Peninsula, and lasted well into the twentieth century. At about the
same time that copper mining began, iron ore was discovered in the Marquette range (Dunbar
and May, 1995). Although copper played out its predominance early, iron ore had an important
role on the world stage for considerably longer. In Ashland, Bayfield, and Superior counties,
Wisconsin, the extractive industry focused on sandstone. Known as Bayfield or Lake Superior
Sandstone, it was widely sought after as a nineteenth-century construction material (Lusignan,
1986).
Many of the extracted raw materials were transported across Lake Superior and down to ports in
Indiana, southern Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania for processing. The need for efficient
shipping facilities resulted in improvements of harbors, canals, and locks needed to move
massive amount of raw goods to the processing plants.
Government
Michigan and Wisconsin were both part of the Northwest Territories established in the late
1780s. The Michigan Territory was carved out of the Northwest Territories in 1829, with
boundaries closely resembling those of today. In 1837, Michigan reached sufficient numbers to
gain entry into the United States as the 26th state in the Union (Dunbar and May, 1995). By the
Northern Border Activities H-101 July 2012