Station: Three Lakes, MI

Three Lakes was a station stop on the Duluth, South Shore & Atlantic railroad line four miles southeast of Nestoria.

Image info: An early view of a DSS&A passenger train and large crowd at Three Lakes depot. [CMUL]

Notes

Time Line

1923. April. Two loaded cars of hog fuel ran away last Monday at the Imperial Mine in Spurr Township, and getting onto the main line of the South Shore crashed into freight train No. 55, almost completely wrecking the locomotive. The accident was said to have been caused by not leaving a switch properly set at the mine. The wrecked engine was taken to Marquette for repairs. [LAS-1923-0413]

1939. March 30. Charles Richardson engineer, and Leo Nadeau, fireman, both of Marquette, were drowned Thursday night when a Duluth, South Shore & Atlantic passenger train struck a stretch of damaged track one mile east of Three Lakes, throwing the locomotive into the Michigamme River. The bodies were recovered from the cab of the completely submerged locomotive. The tender and main car were partly submerged. No passengers were injured. The train, No. 10, runs between Calumet and Marquette, hauling a Milwaukee Road train to Champion, eight miles west of the scene, then on to Marquette. Officials said that a landslide of rock and earth at the edge of a highway 50 feet above the track had caused the accident. Richardson, one of the oldest engineers, was a former State senator. [DFP-1939-0331]

Coast guardsmen from Marquette and Skanee began dragging the Beaufort river near Michigamme in the continued search for the body of Leo Nadeau, the DSS&A fireman who drowned when his engine struck a dirt slide and went into the river. Wrecking crews were held up in their work when the boom on the Soo Line wrecker broke today. The engine, to which divers attached cables, was dragged to the edge of the tracks but it will not be possible to put it on the rails until a North Western wrecker arrives from Escanaba tomorrow morning. [EDP-1939-0404]

Industry

• Pine lumber mill located here in the late 1880s. [DSS]