Iced Isolation: Opportunity and Desolation in America's Northern Frontier

Summary

Beginning 7,000 years ago, humans have engaged Lake Superior’s Southern Shore in different ways. Entrepreneurs, voyagers, immigrants, and society’s periphery have relished, and shattered, in Superior’s raw, unforgiving climate. The region has been a hotbed for cyclical social and economic change as different ethnic and demographic groups clashed in the ice and snow. This paper presents a unique piece of Lake Superior’s landscape, the Keweenaw Peninsula, as an "island of industry in a sea of trees" that was only accessible by water up until the 1880s. Frozen or fluid, water was the only means to access this remote frontier. Consequently, an entire culture of Superior-bound steamships was birthed to support, and supply the frontiersmen living on America’s northern borderland. Historical and archaeological research will be used to present the Keweenaw Peninsula as a frontier land of opportunity amidst desolation, connected only by water. 

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2015   •
• Where the Forest Meets the Water’s Cool: New Perspectives in Maritime Archaeology of the Great Lakes Region

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Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 408