Our Changing Relationship to Lake Superior, 1975-2025

By David Beard, Catherine O'Reilly, Joseph M. Lane, Jennifer E. Moore, Timothy Broman, Chance Lasher, Robert Dewitt Adams, Luke Moravec, Moira Villiard, Anastasia Bamford, Nan Montgomery, Sheila Packa, Krista Sue-Lo Twu, and Jennifer Brady. This Open Rivers feature is occasioned by the fiftieth anniversary of the sinking of the SS Edmund Fitzgerald. The Fitzgerald was a ship moving taconite (iron ore) across the Great Lakes between Silver Bay, Minnesota, and steel mills near Detroit and Toledo. On November 9, 1975, the Fitzgerald was scheduled to transport taconite from Superior, Wisconsin, to Zug Island near Detroit. The ship never made it; the Edmund Fitzgerald was lost in a storm with no survivors-her entire crew of 29 men. We carry the Fitzgerald in our imagination and in our relationship with the lake.