Troubled Water
2024, oil on gessobord, 16" x 20"
In 1866, the city of Duluth combined forces with the Lake Superior and Mississippi Railroad to dig a canal. The project began in 1870, and politicians in Wisconsin, seeing shipping traffic through Superior threatened, contacted the war department to have construction stopped. An injunction on July 13, 1871 was too late, as the canal was completed two months earlier. Local lore holds that on April 30, 1871, a group of city residents, organized by brewer (soon to be mayor) Sidney Luce, arrived at the site with shovels and picks and dug the first connection between the bay and the lake.
In 1866, the city of Duluth combined forces with the Lake Superior and Mississippi Railroad to dig a canal. The project began in 1870, and politicians in Wisconsin, seeing shipping traffic through Superior threatened, contacted the war department to have construction stopped. An injunction on July 13, 1871 was too late, as the canal was completed two months earlier. Local lore holds that on April 30, 1871, a group of city residents, organized by brewer (soon to be mayor) Sidney Luce, arrived at the site with shovels and picks and dug the first connection between the bay and the lake.