First Steam Railroad in Upper Peninsula
On this site in 1852, the Green Bay and Lake Superior Rail-Road began the survey which led to the construction of the first steam railroad in the Upper Peninsula. The railroad ran from Marquette to the Jackson and Cleveland iron mines fourteen miles away. In 1855 the building of the railroad along the previously surveyed route was begun by the Iron Mountain Railroad Company. By 1857 it was hauling ore from the mines to Marquette. It later became part of the Duluth, South Shore and Atlantic Railroad, which has operated since 1961 as the Soo Line. This railroad, and others like it, carried millions of tons of ore, the basic raw material for the rapidly developing steel industry in the United States.
Plaque via Michigan History Center