The two other locks, now called the “old locks,” built by the State of Michigan, and first opened in 1855, are still in use. These old locks are combined, having lifts of 9 feet each to overcome the whole fall of 18 feet. The gates are suspended from pillars seated on the coping of the quoins, and the chambers are filled and emptied through the gates in the old-fashioned way. The old canals and locks were assumed by the United States Government in 1881. The shipping that goes through this canal all passes free, both domestic and foreign. The staple articles of the commerce using the canal are coal, copper, flour, grain, iron ore, pig and manufactured iron, lumber, salt, silver ore, and building stones. Before the opening of the canal the commerce here was nil. It now threatens soon to exceed the capacity of both locks, in view of which the United States Government has already commenced a second enlargement, the estimated cost of which is nearly five millions of dollars.
This new lock is to occupy the site of the old combined locks, and is to surpass all other locks in the grandeur of its dimensions. It will have a chamber 800 feet long between the gates, the width, both in the chamber and at the gates, will be 100 feet throughout, and the depth on the sills will be 21 feet. Of course there are no vessels on the upper lakes large enough to fill such a lock as this, but it is designed to pass a fleet through at a single lockage, including tug-boats, with their flotilla of barges. The canal is to be uniformly 20 feet in depth.
Previous to the construction of the St. Mary’s Falls Canal, all the outside supplies for the upper lake had to be unloaded at the foot of the rapids, transferred over a portage road to the head of the rapids, and reshipped at great expense. Even the vessels which were sailing on Lake Superior had been handed out and dragged around the rapids in the same way. The transfer and supply business became the great industry, and as the mining fever developed, and the Lake Superior district began to boast of its few scattered but permanent settlements, it seemed as if Sault Ste Marie was destined to be the central and chief city of this region. The portage trade, in the very nature of things, could not last. The demands of Lake Superior were too urgent to admit of the delay and harassment incident to this method of transfer, and the construction of a ship canal around the rapids became a practical problem which demanded a speedy solution. Governor Mason in 1837, in his first message, advised the building of such a canal, and during the same year a survey was made for that purpose. In 1838 an appropriation bill was passed by the Legislature, and in the following year the contractors commenced the work. Much to their surprise, the military authorities considered the work an infringement upon the rights of the General Government, and an armed force from Fort Brady drove the contractors off the ground. This put a quietus to the work for several years, although the advocates of the measure did not cease to urge it upon the attention of the State Legislature and Congress. In 1852, however, the latter passed a Bill appropriating 750,000 acres of land to aid in the construction of a canal. In 1853 the Legislature authorised the commencement of the work. The contract was let to construct two consecutive locks, each 350 feet long, 70 feet wide, with a depth of 13 feet of water, and proper canal approaches.
These were the old State locks, now about to be removed and replaced by a single lock which, as already stated, will in its dimensions and capacity, be the largest in the world. This canal has resulted in adding Lake Superior to that system of waterways which is the pride and the chief commercial feature of the northern border.
The commerce of the great American lakes has enormously increased within recent years, as the statistics of the St. Mary’s Falls Canal sufficiently prove. In 1872 the registered tonnage that passed through the canal was under a million tons; in 1880 it was only 1,734,000 tons; and in 1886 it had increased to 4,219,000 tons. The growth of the trade continues. The navigation, it will be remembered, is only open for about seven months of the year, usually commencing about the first week of May, and closing in the first week of December. If it were open all the year round, like that of the Suez Canal, the difference of business, in favour of the St. Mary’s Falls Canal, as compared with the Suez and other great canals, would be much more marked than it is. The tonnage carried through the canal in 1886 was made up of—
| Coal | 1,009,000 tons. |
| Iron ore | 2,089,000 ” |
| Copper | 39,000 ” |
| Salt | 159,000 ” |
| Iron and steel | 115,000 ” |
| Wheat | 18,991,000 bushels. |
| Flour | 1,759,000 barrels. |
On the St. Mary’s Falls Canal in 1888 there were carried no less than 6,411,000 net tons (2000 lbs.) of freight and 25,558 passengers, the freight including nearly 19 million bushels of wheat, over 2½ million tons of lumber (timber), about 2¼ million tons of coal, and 2,190,000 barrels of flour. The total number of vessels that used the canal in that year was 7803, of which 5305 were steamers. The average cargo carried by each vessel, large and small, was about 822 tons, being an increase of 40 per cent. on that of the previous year. This is a development that can hardly be paralleled in the history of transportation. Taking the navigation season at seven months, it means an average of 916,000 tons per month passing through the canal, or at the rate of about 11 million tons a year, which is roughly about double the tonnage that makes use of the Suez Canal.
On the first blush, it is by no means apparent that the St. Mary’s Falls Canal can do much to advance the maritime intercourse of the United States with the nations of the East. And yet it may become an important factor in this direction; so much so, that there are those who hold that New York is likely thereby to become the great distributing centre for the produce of India and China, not on the American continent only, but throughout European and African Atlantic ports as well. This conclusion is based upon circumstances that appear to be only imperfectly understood in Europe. The tunnelling of the Cascade Mountains, now in progress in Washington Territory, will bring Duluth within 1800 miles of Paget Sound, thus bringing the waters of the Pacific Ocean within 1800 miles of navigable waters flowing directly into the Atlantic Ocean, through Lake Superior, the Sault, and the Erie Canal. By this means New York will, it is claimed, be brought within 10,500 miles of Canton, while the distance between that city and London, Liverpool, or Antwerp is 17,000 to 18,000 miles. Between New York and Canton, viâ the Isthmus of Suez, the distance is 20,500 miles, and by the Cape of Good Hope it is 22,500 miles. The future is therefore likely to work some changes in the balance of Eastern trade, although it may not happen that the St. Mary’s Fall Canal will, as some enthusiasts suppose, become the most important rival of the Suez Canal, and “one of the greatest factors in bringing about tremendous changes in the commerce of the world.”
In order to give some idea of the remarkable key-like location of the “Sault” or “Soo,” and the character of the locks, which are the prominent feature of the canal, we have reproduced, in the following chapter (that on Canada) from a recently published work on that locality, a sketch-map, showing the railway and waterway communications that are concentrated at this point ([p. 226]).