Editor's note: The first Soo Lock opened 150 years ago this summer, an event to be commemorated by activities from June 24 through Labor Day at Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan. Prior to the construction of the first lock and canal, in 1855, Lake Superior was virtually isolated from the other Great Lakes because of the St. Marys River's rocky rapids and their 21-foot descent toward Lake Huron. Following is an excerpt of the construction story from "Pride of the Inland Seas, An Illustrated History of the Port of Duluth-Superior," published in 2004 by the Afton Historical Society Press and the Duluth Seaway Port Authority and available at www.duluthport.com:

On August 26, 1852, President Millard B. Fillmore signed into law the bill authorizing construction of a canal and locks system at the Sault. The legislation established precedence for a federal-state share for improvements at the Sault that exists to this day. Instead of appropriating funds from the budget, the federal government transferred 750,000 acres of the Upper Peninsula that had been ceded to the United States by the 1842 treaty with the Lake Superior Anishinaabe. The land grant to Michigan, which was equal to two percent of the total land area of the state, was to be used to defray construction costs of a canal.

The St. Mary's Falls Ship Canal Company proposed to dig a canal a mile long with two accompanying locks, each 350 feet in length and 70 feet wide. The bid price was slightly more than $400,000. Named to head the project was 24-year-old Charles T. Harvey, a Connecticut native who had landed by ship at the Sault in late 1852 as a salesman for the Fairbanks Scale Company of Vermont. Laid low by an attack of typhoid fever, Harvey had followed the 1853 debate in the Michigan legislature with keen interest. That spring, he persuaded his employers to submit a construction bid. Erastus Fairbanks and his brother already had interests in iron lands on the Marquette Range, and they persuaded New York manufacturer Erastus Corning and railroad builder John W. Brooks to join them in forming the Ship Canal Company. Harvey was given unlimited authority to complete the project. He arrived at the Sault in June 1853 with a shipload of equipment and a $50,000 line of credit at a Detroit bank. Within a week, he had hired 400 laborers to begin digging and blasting the canal around the falls.

The Ship Canal Company had a two-year state deadline to complete the canal and locks. Construction continued year-round, even though temperatures at the falls dropped to 35 degrees below zero during the winter months. Cholera struck the camp in the summer and early fall of 1854. By that time, Harvey had more than 2,000 laborers on the payroll, and he organized burial parties to dispose of the bodies secretly at night to avoid panic in the camp.

Costs escalated rapidly. Every bit of foodstuffs, tools and supplies had to be shipped to the Sault from Detroit.

The Fairbanks brothers and Corning watched the mounting costs with growing concern. In the summer of 1854, they dispatched Brooks to the Sault to take over superintendency of the actual construction. Harvey retained his title, but Brooks oversaw the project's completion. On April 19, 1855, water began flowing down the canal from Lake Superior to Lake Huron. Two months later, on June 18, Captain Jack Wilson locked through upbound with the steamer Illinois. Minutes later, the steamer Baltimore locked through going down. On August 14, 1855, the brig Columbia passed through the locks downbound with a cargo of 132 tons of iron ore from the Marquette Range.

When all accounts were settled, Harvey and Brooks had spent almost $1 million to build the canal and locks, more than double the original cost estimate. But the investors became multimillionaires because much of the land they received in payment contained valuable iron and copper deposits. What they had accomplished was of inestimable value. The canal at what would become known as the Soo opened the vast mineral resources of Lake Superior to commercial development. Within half a century, the Soo was referred to as "the busiest mile on earth" because of the nonstop traffic through the locks.