Superior: The Other Half of the Twin Ports
Near Duluth, Wisconsin
Duluth gets most of the attention, but the harbor that made both cities great sits on both sides of the Saint Louis Bay. Superior, Wisconsin was platted before Duluth existed and for decades the two settlements competed for the same prize: control of the finest natural harbor on Lake Superior, where ships could load iron ore and grain from the northern interior and haul it south to the mills and markets of the Great Lakes.
Iron ore docks went up along the Superior waterfront in the eighteen nineties, among them docks built by the Great Northern Railway under James J. Hill, the railroad baron who also built the Great Northern's transcontinental line. Hill understood that the Minnesota iron ranges needed a way to get ore to the furnaces of Pittsburgh and Chicago, and Superior's deep harbor was the answer. By the early twentieth century, the Great Northern had built several ore docks along Superior's Allouez waterfront, concrete and steel structures that loomed over the harbor and filled the holds of lake freighters with thousands of tons of iron ore at a time.
Grain moved in the opposite direction. Superior's grain elevators received wheat from the northern plains brought in by rail and loaded it onto ships for transit east. At the port's peak, many grain elevators stood on the Superior side of the harbor, making the Twin Ports one of the great grain-shipping complexes of the world.
World War Two transformed the waterfront. While the ore docks set loading records to supply the steel for tanks and bombs and ships, the shipyards on both sides of Saint Louis Bay converted to war production. Superior's Butler Shipbuilding and the other Twin Ports yards employed thousands of men and women, producing a fleet of vessels including frigates, cargo carriers, and coastal freighters.
The ore docks on the Superior side are gone now. Most of the old ore docks have been demolished. Grain moves in smaller volumes than the peak years. But the Twin Ports harbor still ranks among the busiest ports on the Great Lakes, and Superior still sits at the western end of that harbor, doing the work it has always done.
