Leaving Snee-Oosh anchored I took the Jetta west to the city of Marquette which is the largest concentration of people in the Upper Michigan. Iron and copper ore were the driving force. The once throbbing industrial waterfront now is made up of open spaces, marinas and condos. A token to the past is the massive ore loading dock. 1000 foot bulk ore freighters were tied up to the loading dock then loaded through 150 ore chutes. The whole structure looks like a monster centipede on its back. The ore came from the long lines of ore trains bringing product from the mining region. On the very top of the loading dock were four train track spurs. Long ore trains would directly dump their loads into the ore chutes and into the freighter. It took close to 500 railroad cars to fill one ore boat.
For lunch I ate a pastie (‘a’ as in “cat” and not like ‘a’ as in “day”. Had to explain that I wasn’t eating nipple covers). Pasties is a north country delight brought over from Cornish, England. The wives would create this small crust eatery stuffed with meat, potatoes and vegetables for their mining husbands. They are a treat.
While in Marquette they were setting up for the annual Labor Day Blues Festival on the waterfront. I stopped by to help a guy zip tying an orange plastic security fence around the event grounds. Three hours later I headed back east, sunburned and tired. No Blues for me that day.
As I drove to campground the image of the massive iron loading dock came back. Here was a vestige of a time gone past. A monument to a time of mining and moving ore. And then the resources were gone; removed from the earth and the people left for another place on the surface of the earth to do the same thing just as they came here to remove the gifts.
Next to my campground is the relic of a blast furnace on the water thus the name; it was called the Bay Furnace. A plaque spoke of the seven years the town stood and harvested the surrounding woods for building materials and for making coke to stoke the blast furnace to make pig iron. Just as in Marquette they listed the ethnic background of the people that worked the industry: in 1870 there were Canadian, Irish, Swedish, Prussian, Scottish. 60 % of the locals working the furnace were foreign born. This was repeated up and down the region in the twenty-nine furnaces from 1858 to 1940. When you look at the history of this great country of ours, it was built on the backs of the immigrants looking for a better life and the owners wanted that cheap labor.
What was established at the birth of this nation carries through to today. I live in a rural agricultural county that is 20% Hispanic due to the necessary farm labor. It is cheap labor used to harvest our food. And still today as in the past we look upon those with suspicion that are “different then us.” After 200 years, the same feeling prevails. Why, I ask?
And just at the iron hulk of an iron ore loading dock in Marquette and the three story stone blast furnace at the campground reminds us of a past life of use and discard, I wonder what monuments to the past are we creating today for our grandchildren to look at. As energy becomes more of an issue rather than durable goods I can’t help but think of the mentality of renewable versus non-renewable sources debate. Already we have exhausted mines and oil wells. Will someday people look at a mothballed nuclear power plant with the same curiosity that I looked upon the dominating feature of the loading dock in Marquette? When I drove by Maple Ridge Wind Farm in upstate New York, I know as long as the wind blows there will be energy produced. While nuclear, gas, oil and coal fired power plants have that feeling of uncertain futures.
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