SHIPPING: Second Route

Hedging its stake in the vital Soo Canal (see map), the War Production Board last week set aside $30,000,000 to develop a second route by which the iron ore of the Mesabi and Marquette ranges can travel down the Great Lakes to the steel mills of Gary, Youngstown and Pittsburgh. The new route will add perhaps a month to the open-water season, expand ore-carrying capacity, and keep the ore moving even if something should happen to halt shipments through the Soo.

Through the locks at Sault Ste. Marie some 84,000,000 tons of rust-red iron rock will pass this year. WPB hopes to raise this total to 100,000,000 this next year by developing the little ore port of Escanaba on the warmer waters of Lake Michigan, so that when needed it can handle 5,000,000 tons a month. This means not only new docks, but also improved rail supply lines to Escanaba direct from Duluth-Superior and from Marquette.

Biggest threat is ice, which closes the Soo more than four and a half months in an average winter. When the big chill comes around Christmas not even Paul Bunyan could get a boat through the 70-foot barriers piled up by the freezing winds. But Lake Michigan freezes six days later than Lake Superior, thaws eleven days earlier in the spring; and additional ice breakers (one of them big enough to cut through ice 9 ft. thick) will keep boats going for perhaps another two weeks. An extra month of open water would mean perhaps 10,000,000 added tons for the hungry furnaces of the lower lakes.