WISCONSIN BLUE BOOK 1989-1990


  Lake Michigan communities and shipping interests pressured Congress for
lighthouses. They succeeded in the years 1834-48 in securing the appropria-
tion of $50,000 for much needed improvements in key locations, but this fell
far short of actual need on a lake famous for its shoals, difficult harbor
en-
trances, and sudden intense storms.
  The dramatic increase in the use of Lake Michigan between the early 1830s
and the outbreak of the Civil War lent greater weight to improvement re-
quests. Lake sailing craft were a rarity when, in 1816, the United States
sent
naval vessels loaded with soldiers to build Fort Howard at Green Bay and
rebuild Fort Dearborn at Chicago. The first steamboat on the lake was the
famous Walk in the Water, launched in 1818, which came to Green Bay under
U.S. army commission in 1821 bringing 200 troops from Detroit. By the
mid-1830s sailing vessels and steamboats both became more common, and
over the next 20 years, as people poured westward using the Lake Erie-Great
Lakes route into the mid-continent, Milwaukee and Chicago mushroomed as
ports of entry. These groups included Americans from the East, and in the
1840s, Germans, Irish, and other foreign-born newcomers in search of new
opportunities in a developing region.   When agricultural development
reached very substantial proportions in the 1850s with the wheat growing
boom in southern Wisconsin, the lake also became the main artery for carry-
ing bulk cargoes of grain eastward. Never again in the state's history would
Lake Michigan play such a critical role in the east-west movement of goods
and people. Ship traffic proliferated and shipbuilding for the Great Lakes
carrying trade sparked innovations in sailing ship design to permit easy
ac-
cess to shallow harbors. At Manitowoc, for example, William Bates devel-
oped a schooner that served these special needs well. Shipbuilding emerged
as a significant industry there, and Manitowoc became known as the "Clip-
per City".
  To the west on the Mississippi River steamboats gradually edged out the
keelboats as carriers of goods and people. Early military needs of Fort Craw-
ford at Prairie du Chien and Fort Snelling in Minnesota brought these craft


Milwaukee in 1850-51. Drawing by John B. Wengler. (SHSW WHi(X3)14312)


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