THE BRIDGE VIEW

Located to the west of the locks and running parallel with the railroad bridge, the International Bridge “takes off” from the U.S. side near the campus of Lake Superior State University which overlooks the area from the site of the former Fort Brady.

As you enter the first archway, the world famous Soo Locks are visible below.

Further on, you’ll pass the International Boundary at the middle of the Bridge. Off to the west you’ll see a series of 16 gates. These gates control the water flow from Lake Superior down to the other connecting Great Lakes. The management of this water flow is operated by the International Joint Commission which makes determinations of gate activity based on the various lake levels.

Within the rapids area, produced by the water rushing through the gates, there is a concrete berm, or wall, stretching about one quarter of a mile. The berm was constructed as a joint operation by the electric utilities of the U.S. and Canada. Its objective is to keep an adequate water flow around Whitefish Island, a natural spawning ground for salmon.

Just beyond Whitefish Island is the Canadian Lock and then the power canal and the hydro-electric generating station of Great Lakes Power.

Approaching Sault, Ontario, there is an excellent view of the city’s growing industrial complex with huge plants of the Algoma Steel Corporation—one of Canada’s largest steel mills—to the west, and the St. Marys Inc. paper plants to the east.

The volume of traffic between the two Saults has more than quadrupled in the first twenty-five years of operation. Some 2,234,000 vehicles crossed the bridge in 1987, as compared to 415,000 vehicles carried by the ferries during their final full year of operation in 1961.

Published by Bill Davie, Trinity Productions.