Iron Ore Transport on the Great Lakes

The availability of inexpensive steel, so crucial to the United States' emergence as a leading industrial power in the late nineteenth century, relied upon the rise of an ore transport system on the Great Lakes that would feed American industry as a whole and come to alter the face of the region. This detailed history recounts innovations in shipping, the improvement of channels and harbors, the creation of locks, technical advances in loading and unloading equipment, and the ability to attract