What's up, dock?

A few years back people referred to it as the "Potato Salad Dock." Before that it was commonly known as the "Engineers Dock." Nowadays nobody seems to know exactly what to call it. It's that broken-down dock and the abandoned warehouse out on the end of Park Point. Shielded from Lake Superior's punishing gusts by stands of aspen and pine, the concrete building is gaunt and silent, but still sturdy-looking. It stands silent, only a stone's throw from the ruins of the old Minnesota Point Lighthouse.

A little farther to the east are remnants of other concrete structures, sections of light railroad track and iron bolts and rods scattered in the sand. Visitors to the site speculate about the origins of the debris; most associate it with the lighthouse and warehouse nearby. The truth is that the three sites are only loosely related.

The Minnesota Point Light was erected in 1858 to guide mariners into Superior's sheltered harbor. The debris and railroad iron of today are remnants of the years-long effort to construct Superior's Entry Piers just after the turn of the century. The old warehouse, though … that's another story.

The fortress-like concrete building was designed in 1904 by the Army Corps of Engineers, much like warehouse buildings it built for its own use at Seventh Street on the Point. The plans refer to the old structure as a "Depot for the 11th Lighthouse District at Duluth," and it was funded at $14,000. The original drawings show two separate buildings, one intended for a buoy shed, tool room and small offices; the second for storage of the oil that was required at lighthouses and keepers' quarters around the Head of the Lakes.

When construction was actually undertaken by Corps of Engineers personnel in 1907, the two buildings were made into one, with the oil shed added to the rear of the larger building, separated from it by a fireproof concrete bulkhead. The Depot measured 97 by 30 feet.

The buoys and lighthouses of western Lake Superior were supplied in 1907 by the 150-foot tender Amaranth, then stationed at Duluth. The ship was berthed downtown between the Marshall-Wells building and Christiansen's Fisheries in what is now called Canal Park, but there were no adequate facilities there for the dozens of buoys serviced by the ship.

A 195-foot pier was constructed at the site of the new lighthouse depot for Amaranth's use, and most of the buoys were moved out there; a tramway connected the pier with the shed. It may be that the lighted buoys were serviced at the depot because they burned acetylene gas, which was dangerous to handle and store. It is not clear whether the unlighted spar and nun-buoys were also serviced at the Depot or at the downtown site.

The Lighthouse Service became a part of the U.S. Coast Guard in 1939, and the Coast Guard built its modern station at Ninth Street on Minnesota Point within a few years of that time. The new station included warehouses and buoy storage spaces, but it is suspected that the Depot at the end of the Point was abandoned by the Coast Guard even before those new facilities came on line. The Corps of Engineers was using the Depot during the mid-1930s to store building materials while it was making improvements to the Superior breakwaters. The old Depot dock fell into disrepair in the 1940s and '50s, and the Corps used it less each year. Occasional tugs tied up to the pilings to wait for arriving steamboats, and their pitching eventually tore out the cleats and broke up the remaining deck timbers.

Local boaters had begun using the pier by that time and taking shelter in the abandoned depot building. It became known as the "Potato Salad Dock" because of the frequent picnics and beach parties staged there. The Power Squadron reportedly leased the property and began investing money for its maintainance; it staged annual spring volunteer maintenance projects.

At one time Fraser Shipyards was contracted for substantial repairs to the pier. The repairs ceased when the Power Squadron found better docking facilities, about twenty years ago.

Potato Salad Dock — not much left to look at.

Today the old Amaranth is long gone. Only a handful of small boats beach at the site for bonfires and picnics, but there is little left of the 195-foot pier. The building has been gutted. Its windows are all gone, the doors have been pulled down and the concrete walls are decorated with grafitti, but the eroding paint has exposed the legend over the entry: "U.S.L.H.S. DEPOT." In five years the "Potato Salad Dock" will be 100 years old.

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Special thanks for sharing their knowledge of the old Depot are due to Lighthouse Service veteran Donald Payment; Coast Guard retirees Bob Parker and CDR. C. Gil Porter; Corps of Engineers personnel Kevin Gange, Alvin J. Klein, Courtland L. Mueller and Laurel Saker; and Power Squadron members Howard Boynton and Jack Soetebier.