Ramya Swayamprakash, Grand Valley State University
Raising Down the “Hell gate” of the Great Lakes: The Limekiln Projects in the Lower Detroit River, 1873-1900
In November 1873, the Milwaukee Daily Sentinel remarked that there was “not a more dangerous point to shipping between Chicago and Buffalo” than the Limekiln Crossing (henceforth the Crossing). In the path of the rising shipping trade, the river’s rocky bed in this unavoidable stretch grounded many a vessel, damaging bottom lines as well. This section of the river, a chokepoint, had to be improved. These first series of iterative and incremental infrastructures set up further, more expansive interventions that created new nature in the lower river. Combatting sedimentation at this chokepoint was the basis of larger, grander hidden-in-plain-sight infrastructures of control.
Chronicling the alleviation of this chokepoint, this chapter argues that technological and infrastructural development in the Great Lakes were territorializing processes that relied on and solidified a nascent techno-infrastructural diplomacy between engineers in the Canada and the United States. Dredging—the scooping up of river bottom silt to clear up channels—was seminal in ensuring smooth trade movement. More importantly, dredging cemented unequal economic power equations between the two nations. Infrastructure creation did not just entail an engineering desire though. Disparate U.S. interests who had begun to consolidate to form the Lake Carriers Association in the 1890s—the preeminent lobby of its kind in the Great Lakes with no parallel in Canada at the time—controlled the growth of shipping. The Lake Carriers worked closely with the U.S Army Corps of Engineers and able to wield significant political power and attention to improve Great Lakes connecting channels. By charting the evolution of the shipping lobby, this chapter addresses an important historical and historiographical lacuna in Great Lakes literature.