Location: Marquette, MI - 1932 DSS&A #6 Concrete Ore Dock

Type: Concrete

Built: 1932

Owner: Duluth, South Shore & Atlantic Railway, later Soo Line Railroad

Length: 989 feet

Height Above Water: 85.7 feet

Pockets: 150 pockets

Ended: 1971 but still exists without approaches. 

Notes

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places

Time Line

1931. The MPUC grants permission for the DSS&A to cross overhead the LS&I in downtown Marquette for a new ore dock, without objection from the LS&I.

1932 Concrete Ore Dock. The last DSS&A ore dock was built by the railroad in 1932 to replace a timber dock built in 1905. The newer single-track approach is a 3,546' long steel trestle, most of it at a 1.22 percent grade. The alignment of the approach has two six degree curves, the first 368' to the right and the second 3380' to the left, and then one seven degree curve, 252 feet long to the right. The dock proper is of reinforced concrete construction on a pile foundation measuring 969' long, 85' 7" high and 67' 4" wide. There are 150 ore pockets with chutes 36' long and 43' 3" from the hinge hole to the water. The dock has a total storage capacity of 40,000 tons. The dock has not been used since 1971. The dock remains as of 2015 but the approach tracks and structures have been removed. [UPM]

1971. Use of the dock ends. Dock originally reverts to the City of Marquette.

1971. A 22-year-old airman stationed at K.I. Sawyer Air Force Base died here after falling down a 75-foot ore chute on the former Soo Line railroad ore dock. He was running along the railroad tracks atop the ore dock next to the ship-loading zone when he was critically injured in the fall, Marquette Police said. He was taken to a local hospital by firemen but died several hours later. He and another airman went over a locked retainer fence and climbed the framework of the dock structure to gain access to the dock police said. [HES-1971-0916]