AhnapeeHarbor

There are no monuments to commemorate the spot, no fortifications to give hints of past conflicts, but the harbor at Algoma was once the scene of a battle. Then, as now, waterfront property was a coveted possession. With access to the water came the potential to dominate the commerce of the whole valley; and with the possibilities of commercial gain came competition and animosity. In Ahnapee during the last half of the 19th century, the competition over harbor access was fierce and the animosity bitter; but what distinguishes this battle over riparian rights was that it was not just the clashing of the wealthy and prestigious. In Ahnapee the harbor was the common interest of the comman man, and in the end it was the common man that won the war.

Following are a series of graphics which illustrate the phases of the development of the harbor between 1851 (the year that the first permanent settlement began) and 1893 (the year that the railroad linked Ahnapee to Kewaunee, Green Bay and Sturgeon Bay).

Although the settlement of Ahnapee by Euro-American immigrants began in 1851, it was decades before the resources were available to begin the commercial development of the river and lakefront. This sketch, showing the state of development in 1870, contains much information about what the earliest conditions were.

Most noticable is the way in which the river is forced to turn north before entering the lake through a small opening. The reason, of course, was a sand bar, clearly depicted. Such sand bars were encountered at almost all of the river mouths on the Great Lakes. Notice, however, how shallow the water was inside the sand bar. The deepest reading is 7.5 feet, but in most spots the river was less than 5 feet deep, and where the river opened into the lake the depth was only 2.5 feet. Obviously such waters would not admit vessels of commerical size, and so the first schooners which visited Ahnapee would anchor off shore and transfer their cargo to small vessels, called lighters, which brought the goods ashore.

In 1856, however, the bridge pier seen in the illustration was built. Extending out to the 15 foot depth, this pier would allow vessels to load and unload much more quickly and easily, but it also did little to protect vessels from the fury of the lake. Many were the lake crafts that got caught at bridge piers by the waves and wind, and, unable to sail away, were pounded so badly that they sank. Sometime after the pier was built, a local effort was made to deepen the river mouth so that vessels could "come inside" as they did at the busy ports of Chicago and Milwaukee to the south. The effort did not receive the federal funding that helped the large cities, and it was interupted by the coming of the Civil War. Thus, we see that in 1870 the condition of the Ahnapee harbor (if it can be called that) was still very primitive. The buildings and docks shown along the river were used by fishing boats.

What this drawing from the survey does not reveal, however, is the building tensions within the community about access to the waterfront. By 1870 the bridge pier was controlled by several local capitalists who were the forwarding merchants. Because their pier offered the only means for commercial vessels to load or unload cargo, these forwarding merchants had a virtual monopoly on the harbor, and, even more importantly, were able to charge whatever fees they wished for the use of the pier. In effect, this amounted to taxing every item that came into or out of the town, and the fees charged could double the shipping costs. This, of course, made the pier owners wealthy, but made the local merchants and farmers very angry. And, thus began Ahnapee's harbor warfare.

The first effort to break the monopoly was to build a competing pier a short distance to the south of the river mouth. This structure was called the Farmers' Pier because it was built co-operatively by local farmers so that they could ship their produce without paying the capitalists' tax. But the farmers were ultimately outsmarted by the capitalists who secretively bought stock in the co-operative pier until they owned a controlling share. They then simply shut the pier down. Eventually, it fell into disrepair, and all traces of it have disappeared from site.

A second effort at defeating the monopoly's grip on the harbor is depicted in this close-up from the 1880 "Birdseye View" of Ahnapee. It shows that while the brige pier owned by the forwarding merchants was still operating, piers had also been constructed to protect a man-made channel which had been dug through the sand bar so that the river could empty directly into the lake. The hope was that the flow of the river would keep this new channel open, and even deepen it beyond the 4 to 5 feet depths which prevailed. But the river simply did not have the forceful current needed to do the job, and, as a consequence, many vessels which entered the channel were not able to go upstream far enough to reach land that was not owned by the monopolists.

In response to this frustration local residents raised money to build the pier which is shown lying right in the middle of the channel. The idea was that vessels could tie up to this pier and offload their cargo without having to pay the forwarding merchants their fee. Shallow river scows could then be used to collect the cargo from the pier and take it further upstream to docks that were not controlled by the monopoly. The popular sentiment which lay behind the construction of this pier is evident in the name that it was given - the "Citizens' Pier."

Ultimately, the Citizens' Pier was also a failure. It did not eliminate the need to handle the cargo twice in order to get it ashore. It also proved to be a colossal nuisance because it so constricted the channel. In the above survey illustration it can be seen that the area between the Citizen's Pier and the north government pier eventually became completely blocked. In the original U. S. Army Corps of Engineers drawing that this illustration is based on, the Citizen's Pier was marked with the words "to be removed." So, after a short and inglorious career the Citizens' Pier, too, was to be no more.

But, still hope sprang eternal. As can be seen from this illustration, the government engineers had undertaken a major harbor improvement project at Ahnapee. It consisted of two efforts: (1) to lengthen the piers that protected the river mouth; and (2) to dig a channel up the river so that vessels of commercial size could sail (or be towed) up river to docks that would compete with the monopolists' pier. This time Mother Nature was the culprit in sabotaging the plan. The army engineers discovered that a limestone ledge lay under the river about half-way between its mouth and the brige at Second Street. This necessitated a long and tedious process of drilling and blasting that went on for years with varying intensity depending on how much money the politicians in Washington voted for the harbor project. (The area where blasting began in 1876 is the shaded area in the river bed inside the mouth.)

This government drawing based on the 1896 survey shows that (1) the Citizen's Pier was indeed removed, (2) the blasting of the channel in the river continued (shaded part of river bed) but at an excruciatingly slow pace and petered out altogether just upstream from the Second Street bridge, and (3) that the extension of the piers at the river mouth was completed, but that the ends of the piers were strangely akilter. Even more importantly, this drawing shows that the idea of constructing an "inner harbor" at Ahnapee (that is, a harbor which was within the entrance of he river mouth) had at long last been abandoned. An alternative had been proposed, however. Close examination of the drawing shows the outline of the planned "outer harbor" (immediately south of the south pier) that constitutes the basic harbor configuration of modern day Ahnapee (i.e. Algoma).

So what then became of the monopolists and the citizens' struggle to get around their taxation of the town imposed by the monopolists? The drilling and dredging of the channel was part of the answer. Although it never achieved the desired goal, it was enough to allow shallow draft vessels to enter the river far enough to avoid the monopolists' land. Another part of the answer was Mother Nature again. In November of 1880 a severe storm (the "Alpena Gale") so damaged the bridge pier owned by the monopolists that it was ultimately abandoned. And the third part of the answer was simply the evolution of lake commerce. Railroads and paved roads were destined to take over the job that was once done at Ahnapee by sail and steam craft. In time, Ahnapee looked inland, instead of toward the lake, for its commercial ties. And, as the harbor became a less vital link with the outside world, the harbor battle cooled.

Still, even after the railroad reached Ahnapee, there were tensions at the lakefront. This time it was between the federal government and the capitalists who owned the land at the mouth of the river. After they lost their private pier, these capitalists continued shipping from their warehouse at the foot of Steele Street. But now vessels tied up to the piers built by the federal government to protect the harbor mouth. This eventually led to local rancor and a legal battle between the capitalists and the government about the right to use the government piers. In other words, the government eventually inherited the headache which the local citizenry had been dealing with for decades.

A final note. What about those strangely akilter ends to the piers? Even today when one looks at the north pier at Ahnapee (Algoma), one can see the unusual break in its line. We know, of course, that this was not the intention of the engineers who designed the harbor (see the 1875 drawing above which shows the proposed piers running straight and true out into the lake). And yet, when the next survey map was drawn the outermost cribs which had been placed are clearly askew. So what happened? Could it have been the fault of the builders? This seems unlikely given the fact that pier building was a well established procedure. A more likely culprit is, once again, Mother Nature. The following passage from the Ahnapee Record of October 21, 1880, the week after the "Alpena Gale" provides a vital hint. "The bridge pier owned by Boalt & Stebbins is a total wreck and will not be rebuilt or replaced. The waves were so heavy that the plank and timber were nearly all lifted off and washed ashore. The warehouse [on the pier] was totally twisted out of shape. Owing to the destruction of the pier there will be no more steamers at this place until the completion of the harbor."

Could it be that the same storm moved the outer cribs of the government pier? Unfortunately, the newspaper record is silent on this question, and no other documentation has been found. We only know for sure that at some time between the time that the pier extension was proposed (the mid 1870's) and the time that the piers were completed (the early 1880's) the cribs went askew. Perhaps the same gale which so damaged the monopolists' pier in 1880 also picked up and moved some of the stone filled cribs which were the foundations for the government piers. And, perhaps, rather than try to move the cribs back into line, the builders accepted Nature's verdict and finished the piers in the crooked fashion dictated by the great Alpena Gale.