Source: The Mining Journal
Marquette, Mi.
December 11, 1886

The South Shore Road

The Duluth News gives this interesting history of the project to
connect Duluth with Sault Ste. Marie by a railroad running along the
south shore of Lake Superior, in its issue of Monday last. Being
written by a Duluth editor, and from a Duluth standpoint, it,.as
a matter of course, gives all the credit for the conception of the
enterprise and its development to the point which it has now reach-
ed to Duluth parties, but it deals truthfully enough with the im-
portance of the road, which is destined to handle an immense traffic,
from the day it is open for business:

In 1879 W. W. Spaulding was president and W. Van Brunt secretary
of the Duluth chamber of commerce. In those early days they were
interested in several new railway schemes for Duluth, and in relation
to The DSS&A the following facts were then laid before the Montreal
chamber of commerce by these gentlemen, substantially as follows:

The route proposed and advocated by St. Paul and Minneapolis
passes through a wilderness and where nat an acre of land grant to
aid in the construction. The distance is 425 miles by an air line,
but in reality it would be much greater in order to avoid the lakes
and difficult portions of the upper peninsula of Mi.

The other route, or what is called the South Snore line from Dul-
uth to Sault Ste. Marie, has a land grant almost its entire length
with part of the road already completed and running and other points
under contract. The distance from Sault Ste. Marie to Marquette is
144 miles, most of which is covered by a land grant to the Marquette
& Mackinaw railroad, twenty miles of which, east from Marquette, ic
under construction, and the whole contract to be finished by 1881.
From Marquette to L'Anse is sixty miles, already completed, and pass-
ing through the richest iron district on the continent, giving it an
immense local traffic.

From L'Anse to Ontonagon river, forty-two miles is covered by a
land grant to the Marquette & Ontonagon railroad, *the line passing
through forests of pine and hard woods, within easy reach of the most
extensive and valuable copper mines already known. The output of
the iron mines exceeds one million tons per annum, which will be
largely increased as railroad facilities are added, and the value of
the copper produced reaches nearly ten millions of dollars per year.
The business of the mines alone would support the whole through line,
while the praposed line from St. Paul would pass so far south as to
be unavailable for their use.

From Ontoragon to the Montreal river, sixty miles, the line would
pass along the south side of the copper range, not only accommodating
the mines, but favorably located for the lumbering interests of the
vast pine country tributary to the three great branches of the Cnto-
nagon river.

From Montreal river to Duluth, eighty miles, is covered by a grant
to the NP, through a country rich in undeveloped minerals and fine
lands.

The distance from Duluth to the Sault was stated to be 386. A map
was submitted showing the proposed line, and that it formed an al-
most direct line from ocean to ocean via the Sault.

 

 
pe 2 The South Shore Road - Dec. 11, 1886

Attention was also called to the fact that Duluth had the
sympathy of the whole state outside of St. Paul and Minnes
apolis, and it was claimed that it was’ the natural, gateway,
and that in due time it would command the commerce of the
great American and Canadian northwest. But the main point which
they called the attention of Montreal to was the fact that the
shortest possible all-rail route from tidewater at Montreal to
the vast fertile fields in the northwest was via the Sault Ste.
Marie, the south shore of Lake Superior and Duluth.

It is this idea, then being worked with a view to bringing
the Winnipeg trade through Duluth, that General Hammond took up
and worked out, and the result is that road is a fact and is now
under construction.

*MH&O RRe