Loon's Foot Landing (Superior, Wisconsin)

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  grumpy ore dock (guest)

  The huge dock going out into the bay is the old Northern Pacific Railway ore dock. Trains of ore hoppers would run right up on top of the dock and drop their loads of ore down into huge dock "pockets." When a ship pulled up alongside and opened up its cargo hold hatches, chutes would be lowered from the pockets, and gravity would take the ore from the pockets, down the chutes, and into the hold. There were four Great Northern Rwy docks just across the mouth of the Nemadji River to the SE. In 1970 the NP and the GN merged (with the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy) into the Burlington Northern. I'm not sure, but it seems that the NP dock was inactive by this time. Later in the 1970s the BN built its Dock No. 5, just SE of the old GN docks. Its much larger capacity and greater speed made the old chute-type docks obsolete, and the BN stopped using the old GN docks, too; note that one has been dismantled. For further details and links to pics and more, see the comment page for "BNSF Allouez Taconite Facilty," the large, reddish WikiMapia "place" S and SW of the docks.

  18 years ago | reply | hide comment