McDougall’s first shipyard in Duluth was roundly mocked by his former chief draftsman Robert Clark’s account from the 1920s. However, despite Clark’s apparent disdain for McDougall, he wasn’t alone in thinking the site was a poor one.

The title for this post comes from the headline of the “Lake Superior Review and Weekly Tribune” on September 23, 1887. they went on to observe:

“Intelligent people will not place any reliance in the locating of the Duluth Drydock and Shipbuilding company’s plant ‘in the rear of the round house at Rice’s Point’ as stated in an evening sheet devoted to ‘scooping.’ There isn’t room enough, in the first place, to build a good sized canoe there, and as for a shipyard and drydock – the plant takes room and plenty of it, more than can be obtained in that vicinity. The shipyard scheme is all right and most desirable, but the location is not in the vicinity mentioned. It will not be located there – if it intends to build anything bigger than a rowboat, if – practical men like Thomas Wilson and Alex. McDougall have anything to do with it……They won’t fool away time or money on any such gimcrack affair as would have to exist in that space spoken of.”

They were wrong, McDougall would build on the site and launch the “101” in June 1888. Today, the Duluth Timber Company sits roughly on the site at the junction of Railroad Street and Garfield Avenue.

National Museum of the Great Lakes – Presentation

Though the link may not work, I wanted to post the presentation I gave at the National Museum of the Great Lakes in Toledo, Ohio on March 8, 2017. For those of you weather followers, that was the day of the huge windstorm that swept across Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, and northern Ohio. It was quite the trip from Grand Rapids to Toledo to say the least.

For those of you visiting the museum, make sure to check out the exhibit I helped create with Dr. Jeffrey Ram of Wayne State University’s School of Medicine. It will be up until August.