Built at Wyandotte’s Detroit Shipbuilding Company and launched in 1906 for Cleveland, the Sir Thomas Shaughnessy is another engineering marvel on the Detroit River. The Shaughnessy, carrying grain bound for Erie, withstood the river’s icy waters, setting the record (at the time) for the latest delivery of the season.
The Detroit/Windsor border is one of the busiest international borders in North America, seeing over 10,000 commercial vehicles cross per day (and that does not include ordinary cars). The border was busy almost a hundred years ago, too, as today’s article shows.
Back in June, the blog featured an article from Mount Pleasant Daily Times commemorating the beginning of the construction of the Detroit-Windsor tunnel. Today’s piece, published five months later, chronicles a mishap in the construction process—the crashing of a 500-ton tunnel tube. Fortunately, nobody was hurt in the accident (and neither was the tube). While an unfortunate event, indeed, the crash reminds us just how marvelous this work of engineering truly was.
Continuing with the theme of run-running on the Detroit River, today’s article hails from Ontario’s Newmarket Era. An opinion piece by the Women’s Christian Temperance Union—an international, women-led organization committed to social and moral reform through outlawing alcohol—documents and offers some scathing commentary on a legal case involving rum running.
Today’s group of articles features another international perspective on the Detroit River, this time hailing all the way from Wales. The writer offers a scolding account of the illicit liquor trade across the river, somewhat surprisingly comparing rum runners with Reds and Communists. According to this account of the role of Ecorse in the trade, three fourths of the illegal liquor smuggled into the US during Prohibition came across the Detroit River.
101 years ago today, the Prince of Wales took a ‘strenuous’ trip to Detroit, with a jam-packed itinerary in advance of a subsequent trip to Toronto. The Prince toured Henry Ford’s factory, dined with the founder, and attended a reception at the Edsel Ford Home along the river.
Continuing with our recent theme of building out physical infrastructure along the river, today’s story lays out plans for yet another engineering marvel – expanded sewage drains in Wyandotte. The purpose of the proposed plan was to divert the substantial quantities of residential sewage that was being dumped into Ecorse Creek, on the upriver side of the city, into to a discharge point south of the city, presumably to reduce sewage flow along the growing city’s riverfront. The water treatment plant the article anticipates being built at that location was constructed two years later, in 1927.
With an engine plant in Detroit and a shipyard in Ecorse, along the Detroit River, the Great Lakes Engineering Works was a leading shipbuilding company that produced over 300 ships and steamers–including the famous Edmund Fitzgerald, from 1902 to 1960. Today’s article discusses the Ford Motor Company’s tall order for steamers to carry iron ore on the Great Lakes.
With the Gordie Howe Bridge’s opening on the horizon, today’s article discusses the planning process for the construction of the Ambassador Bridge 100 years ago. The bridge, it was promised, would set a new span length record, reroute tourist traffic to the East Coast through Canada, and unite ‘still more closely’ the United States and Canada.
A bonus article for the month of August to brighten up everyone’s start to the semester! Today’s piece, a rotogravure supplement, contains two Detroit River mentions. The first is an airplane shot of the Edison Boat club’s annual regatta. The second is a picture of swimmer Edwardina Kranich, who won the Women’s Aquatic club state championship for swimming in the river.
Often overlooked in Detroit’s rich history of shipbuilding are the robust contributions from the small-but-mighty Wyandotte community. Today’s article, originally published in the Michigan Investor of Grand Rapids, announced the forthcoming closing of the storied Detroit Shipbuilding Company’s Wyandotte plant.
While the Henry Ford Company is associated primarily with automobiles, in the 1920s it exercised outsized influence over multiple modes of transportation in the Detroit River region. Today’s article details a lawsuit filed by Zug Island’s Hanna Furnace company challenging Ford’s reduction of freight rates on his railway.
Detroit’s third annual aquatic carnival took place at Belle Isle in 1922, with admission free of charge. With a variety of sporting events on the Detroit River, such as boating, yacht racing, and swimming, the carnival – popular among prominent Detroiters – turned the river into a ‘playground for the day.’
To facilitate more efficient transportation of materials (chiefly, iron ore) to his Rouge Factory Plant—originally situated at the confluence of the Detroit River and the River Rouge—Henry Ford hatched a plan to widen the waters. With consent from Congress and government supervision, Ford’s team opened the river to accommodate lake steamer traffic, while also adding new bridges and increasing dock space.
To curb gang-controlled rum-running activity on the Detroit River during Prohibition (1920–1933), the Michigan Department of Public Safety patrolled the river with four armed speed boats—a mini “Navy” of sorts. The city of Ecorse—which had become the main point of entry for smuggled liquor—received special attention from the armed fleet.
Today’s article commemorates the beginning of the construction of the Detroit-Windsor tunnel beneath the Detroit River, an occasion that was celebrated on both sides of the river and even by President Coolidge. The tunnel was the world’s first vehicular crossing between two nations ever constructed and only the third tunnel between two nations.
Today’s story is the tenth chapter from Ford’s “The Great To-Day, The Greater Future,” the book which documents the author’s business philosophy and his company’s towering success. This chapter provides a detailed account of Ford’s production cycle at the River Rouge plant along with a reminder of the importance of the Detroit River to the company’s transportation infrastructure.
Today’s article, from The Monroe Evening News, celebrates the Detroit River’s emergence as one of the two most heavily used waterway for freight shipping in the country. With the construction of new ports and harbors, coupled with the millions of tons of freight passing through the river and Lake St. Clair each year, the article proposes that Michigan will soon become a ‘maritime empire.’
Today’s article chronicles a massive sturgeon catch by Ontario fisherman Calixte Labute (1868-1947) off Peche Island, a river island on what is now the Canadian side. According to DNR biologist Andrew Briggs, sturgeon were once so plentiful that one could almost “walk across the river” on their backs.
With the massive boom in the American automotive industry—thanks to Henry Ford’s assembly line—arose the need for greater consideration for road safety. Today’s article concerns a ‘Safety City’ exhibit that toured the state in 1929, from cities in close proximity to the Detroit River like Mt. Clemens, all the way to the Upper Peninsula. A miniature model of Detroit, complete with a riverfront view, instructed visitors on eighteen different causes of traffic accidents. Each stop on the exhibit’s tour also featured an essay competition for local high school seniors.
During the Prohibition era, rum runners, often connected with organized crime, transported large quantities of alcohol across the Detroit River from the Canadian to the US side. While the Ontario Temperance Act banned the consumption of alcohol in the province beginning in 1916, it remained perfectly legal to store alcohol intended for export in a bonded warehouse, greatly facilitating the lucrative river smuggling trade.
Today’s article reminds us of the Detroit River’s storied role as a pathway to freedom for enslaved Americans before the Civil War. While leveling land to build the 37-story David Stott building at 1150 Griswold Street, near the site of the famed Finney House barn, construction workers unearthed a tunnel that was most likely part of a network of passages used by the anti-slavery resistance.
Today’s stories, hailing from Detroit and Lethbridge, Alberta, offer complementary accounts of a message in a bottle and its long journey from the Detroit River to the Pacific Ocean. Donald McElhinney, a high schooler from London, Ontario, cast a pop bottle into the Detroit River in 1923. Two years later, off the coast of Santa Barbara, J.W. Heygart found the bottle. Both articles suggest, however improbably, that the bottle found its way through the lakes, down the St. Lawrence to the Atlantic, and then over to the Pacific through the Panama Canal.
Today’s article, published in Windsor’s The Chronicle Telegraph, focuses on the dedication of St. Mark’s Community Church in Detroit, a church “of and for the people.” Boasting a revolving electric cross on its roof, and eventually attracting a congregation of over 3,000 people weekly, we might think of St. Mark’s, located at the intersection of Jefferson and Garland, as an early precursor of today’s megachurch. With a stunning riverfront view, a game room, an auditorium, a roof garden, and even a bowling alley, the church put community and fellowship at the center of their ministry, a space importantly dedicated to “all, irrespective of creed.” Protestantism and its various denominations (Baptist, Lutheran, Methodist, etc.) remained the most represented religion in Detroit at this time, but immigration and migration—due to employment opportunities at Ford—created an even richer constellation of faith in the region that included Catholicism, Islam, and Judaism. While St. Mark’s closed in 1972, the building still stands today.
Considered Downriver’s “most historic and renowned shipyard” during its shipbuilding years, Wyandotte Shipyard, founded by naval architect Frank Kirby, produced over 200 cutting-edge ships between 1870 and 1923 for the Detroit Shipbuilding Company (Steffke). Today’s article looks at a major sale of two ships, named Owana and City of Toledo, which were built as ‘excursion steamers’ – steamboats designed to take passengers on leisure trips. The sale of the ships was due to a ‘libel,’ a process that initiates legal action against a ship, usually to claim damages or enforce a ‘maritime lien’. A maritime lien is a legal claim against a ship that gives the lienholder the right to take ownership of said ship. To satisfy the lien, the court can order the sale of the ship, which is exactly what we see in the article below; however, the rationale for the lien is not disclosed and requires further research. That’s enough for today’s crash course in admiralty law—I hope this article gives you a glimpse into Wyandotte’s essential role in the broader history of shipbuilding on the Great Lakes, by way of the Detroit River.
As Detroiters emerge, shivering, from their most recent polar vortex, they might be intrigued by a glimpse back at wintry scenes in their city from 100 years ago today. Today’s inaugural blog post features a photographic supplement from the January 25, 1925 edition of the Detroit Free Press produced using the relatively new rotogravure printing process, which enabled high-quality image reproduction in print newspapers. The supplement is full of photos by Free Press staff photographers R. Kindle and Joseph Kalec depicting winter leisure on the river. The Grosse Pointe Yacht Club embarks on a weekly series of ice boat tests (mostly on Lake St. Clair, which connects to the river from the north), while female skaters congregate near Belle Isle to participate in ‘rough and tumble’ games on the ice.
