1. Addison, Douglass D. Sr. Great Northern Railway Ore Docks of Lake Superior Photo Archive. Hudson, Wis.: Iconografix; 2002. 126 p. Notes: Using primarily photographs and engineering drawings, this book documents the operation of the world’s largest iron ore docks, which are located in Superior, Wisconsin. Over time the Great Northern Railway Company, headquartered in St. Paul, Minnesota, built altogether four docks in the Superior harbor for the transfer first of iron ore (up through 1969) and later of taconite (beginning in 1969) from railroad cars to ocean-going ships. Ore Dock One was built in 1892 of timber, Ore Dock Two in 1899-1900 of timber, Ore Dock Three in 1902-1903 of timber, and, Ore Dock Four in 1911 of concrete and steel; the improvements made over the years to all four docks are carefully detailed. The Superior ore docks were featured in the April 1925 issue of the Great Northern Semaphore and that article is reprinted here in its entirety as the “Introduction” to this book (p. 6-10).

    A nearby, related attraction in Superior is the S.S. Meteor Maritime Museum, which preserves the last surviving example of the cigar-shaped “whaleback” ore boats built in the 1890s, one of the early style of ships to use Superior’s iron ore docks. The S.S. Meteor was built in the Superior harbor and since 1972 has been permanently berthed there, with guided tours being offered by the museum from Memorial Day to Labor Day. On the tours one gets to see the operational sections of the ship (the pilot house, captain’s and crew’s quarters, galley, and engine room), in addition to thousands of Great Lakes shipping artifacts on display in the hold of the ship, as well as a history of ship building in the area; for information about the museum, see their web site, available at www.visitsuperior.com/ssmeteor/index.html.

  1. Walsh, Margaret. “The Manufacturing Frontier: Pioneer Industry in Antebellum Wisconsin, 1830-1860”;
  2. Notes: Ph.D. thesis, University of Wisconsin, 1969. 2 volumes (564 leaves). In an impressive work of original research, Walsh explores the development of manufacturing in Wisconsin from 1830, when settlement by northern European immigrants increased dramatically, to 1860 just prior to the U.S. Civil War. The author provides a statewide survey of the subject, as well as extensive discussion regarding the economies of six Wisconsin counties, selected as being representative of the different development patterns in Wisconsin during the period. The profiled counties are Jefferson, Grant, Winnebago, Eau Claire, Racine, and Milwaukee; the examples they represent are drawn from agriculture, lumbering, and mining, in addition to both rural and urban settings. With the state’s plentiful raw materials and good natural transportation routes helping to create a strong manufacturing base, the author concludes that it was not surprising that by 1860 Wisconsin’s industrialization had achieved significance not only for the Midwest, but also for the nation as a whole. The major primary sources used by the author included “the federal manuscript censuses for the state of Wisconsin, 1850 and 1860, schedule 5, products of industry, the Dun & Bradstreet handwritten commercial credit rating reports for Wisconsin, 1844-1865, and local newspapers … supplemented by manuscript business papers, agricultural and trade journals, city directories, reports of boards of trade and chambers of commerce and official state and federal government publications” (p. 538). For a fuller abstract, see Dissertation Abstracts International, 1970, 31/01, p. 348-A.
  1. —. The Manufacturing Frontier: Pioneer Industry in Antebellum Wisconsin, 1830-1860. Madison, Wis.: State Historical Society of Wisconsin; 1972. 263 p. Notes: A revision of the author’s thesis (Ph.D.)–University of Wisconsin. Walsh explores the development of manufacturing in Wisconsin from 1830, when settlement by northern European immigrants increased dramatically, to 1860 just prior to the U.S. Civil War. The author provides a statewide survey of the subject, as well as extensive discussion regarding the economies of six Wisconsin counties, selected as being representative of the different development patterns in Wisconsin during the period. The profiled counties are Jefferson, Grant, Winnebago, Eau Claire, Racine, and Milwaukee; the examples they provide are drawn from agriculture, lumbering and mining, in addition to both rural and urban settings. With the state’s plentiful raw materials and good natural transportation routes helping to create a strong manufacturing base, the author concludes that it was not suprising that by 1860 Wisconsin’s industrialization had achieved significance not only for the Midwest, but also for the nation as a whole. This book won the D.C. Everest Prize in Wisconsin Economic History.