More from Two Harbors, MN

And one of the tugboats which brought the cargo boats into and out of harbor. This is the Edna G, which we also toured. It's owned now by the MN Historical Society, which seems to be VERY active, and have received LOTS of endowments. Our guide worked for the Society, and was VERY knowledgable!! Even told us all about the boiler (all of which I understood. Those of you who knew me back in my working days will understand.) The fuel for the boilers was coal. And a crewmember's shift was 24 hours, whether or not anything was happening. they just came and lived on the tug for 24 hours, and did what was necessary in those 24 hours.

This is Dick in front of the depot-museum, with 2 of the locomotives under that cover behind Dick. A little one, and a huge one.

And this is 180 degrees around, from the other round window.

We went up into the lighthouse, and this was the view out the circular window you can see at the top. That's the iron loading facility out into the water you can see in the background. There were bins into which the cranes dumped the ore, and then the bins opened at the bottom to dump the ore to the next cargo ship. It had been improved, but essentially it was the same structure that was there in the late 1800s. But back then, there were 7 of them! Two Harbors was a very rich place.

Yes, sorry it's topsy turvy. This was the very cute lighthouse at Two Harbors. this town was one of the first towns to begin to ship out the iron which is rich in the hills west of here. They built a railroad back to bring the iron ore to the coast. It's one of the very few natural harbor on this rocky NW coast of Lake Superior, and they built a conveyor type loading facility to receive the iron ore from the railcars; and then to drop it down into the cargo ships which took them across the lakes to steel companies. This was all in the late 1800s.