Marquette LS&I Railroad Ore Dock, Michigan

This 1,200 foot long ore dock is the primary port for the remaining iron mines operating on the Upper Peninsula (currently mostly the Tilden Mine, 15 miles west). The UP was a major early source of iron ore feeding the American steel industry, and the largest source in the USA by the 1890s. Most of the ore was taken by rail to Marquette and Escanaba, where it was loaded on to ships headed to the mills. The first version of this dock was constructed in 1911, as the terminus of the Lake Superior and Ishpeming Railroad. Today trains full of ore park on the dock, 75 feet above the waterline, and dump their load into a hundred concrete silo-like pockets, one beneath each carload of ore, by opening hatches in the bottom of each car. The ore remains in these pockets until a special lake freighter arrives at the dock. Once the ship lines up and is fastened, chutes fold down from each pocket, channeling their contents into the hold of the ship, which is built with openings into the hold that line up with the chutes. Up to 10 million tons of ore are shipped off this dock every year.