In 1891 the Daisy Roller Milling Company laid railroad tracks across the swampy shore at 21st Avenue East on the Superior waterfront, leading to the company's new Daisy Flour mill.

The site was formerly occupied by Superior City's pioneer Quebec Pier, built around 1853 for the community's earliest steamboat arrivals; it was more recently occupied by Peavey's King Midas Mill. The area around the tracks was filled in with gravel and earth just after the turn of the century, and still more recently it was paved over with blacktop.

Barely concealed beneath the fill are the remains of the schooner Algonquin, one of Lake Superior's most historic ships. Unquestionably among the most sacred sites at the Head of the Lakes, it is probably known by fewer than a half-dozen people today.

The Algonquin was built in1839 by the Cleveland North Western Lake Company to compete with the Hudsons Bay and the American Fur Companies on Lake Superior. The entire fleet on the Big Lake consisted of five schooners and, at 55 feet, Algonquin was the largest of the bunch. She was built at Black River (now Lorain), Ohio, by George Washington Jones and portaged around the Soo Rapids on rollers, since the now-famous locks were not built there until 15 years afterwards. The portage took more than three months.

The little ship served Lake Superior for the next 18 or 20 years while her smaller contemporaries were being retired or sent down the St. Marys Rapids to sail the lower lakes. She was the backbone of regional commerce until the time when other craft were brought over the portage and the locks were finally opened, in 1855.

For a short time, Algonquin was the only ship on Lake Superior. She made enormous contributions to the history of the region, carrying fish, lumber, copper and iron ore. She carried many of the earliest settlers to the mining communities of Isle Royale and the South Shore. She reportedly carried the supplies to build Fort Wilkins at Copper Harbor and the iron work for Marquette's first ore dock, and she rescued the passengers from the wrecked steamer Monticello in the fall of 1852. She was also said to have been the first vessel to call at Bayfield and the first to ascend the St. Louis River to Fond du Lac.

The Algonquin career ended when she suffered a fire in her cabin at the old Quebec Pier in Superior in 1858. She was subsequently retired, and within a few years her leaking old hulk was pulled into the cat tails nearby and abandoned.

The wreck became a local landmark. Older citizens began taking pieces of it for souvenirs. Parts of the historic craft were made into furniture, canes, letter-openers and other keepsakes. In July 1891 a sign was posted at the wrecksite warning "vandals" against "further despoliation."

An 1894 Marine Review article observed that the remains of the ship were fast rotting away. Superior historian John A. Bardon reported in a 1932 Evening Telegram article that the ship had "entirely disappeared."

Seventy years later, as we enter the first years of the 21st century, we are at risk of forgetting that this modest little ship even existed. The time is right to mark the grave of the old Algonquin and the site of the first commercial pier at the Head of the Lakes.

Historian Pat Labadie, former director of the Corps of Engineers Lake Superior Maritime Visitor Center in Duluth, lives near Superior.