Logs started going down Lake Superior in rafts from the North Shore as early as 1887, but rafts in the late 1880s and early 1890s were as likely to be assembled at river mouths along the South Shore and towed to mills in Duluth as well.  In 1887, the Inman tug line in Duluth made arrangements with Twin Ports sawmill owners to tow more than 15 million board feet of logs from the mouths of the Brule and Amnicon rivers to Duluth mills. [5]   In May 1891, the Murray & Company mill in Duluth opened the season by taking delivery of 2.5 million board feet of logs rafted across the western end of the Lake from the mouth of the Amnicon River. [6]

“Few people stop to consider the amount of logs daily towed into this port,” a reporter observed in the spring of 1887.  “An average of three tugs are constantly employed in towing logs to Duluth from points along the north and south shores.  Receipts from these sources average about 3,500,000 feet a week.  This may not seem a large amount weekly, but in the year’s summary of trade it cuts quite an important figure.” [7]

The log tows that were rafted down from western Lake Superior and the Upper Peninsula were frequently the subject of litigation and discord with other Great Lakes carriers.  To get the logs from Lake Superior into Lake Huron, the tug captains had to maneuver the rafts down the St. Mary’s River.  The job took nerves of steel, and more than one upbound vessel was run aground when logs filled the entire channel between the two Lakes. [8]   In 1889, a small Canadian steamer wandered into a log boom on Pigeon Bay of Lake Erie in the fog and was carried 15 miles before she could extricate herself. [9]   Tug captains mounted locomotive lights on the bridge to warn passing vessels of the hazards posed by the raft towed behind. [10]

“If there is anything the average vessel man fears, hates and despises it is a raft,” an 1890 editorial in the Marquette Daily Mining Journal  described the passage of a raft down the St. Mary’s River.  “The raft contains a fine lot of logs, but the air along the St. Mary’s River will be blue with expressions theological but not orthodox when it goes through.” [11]

The situation deteriorated to such an extent that in 1894, the newly-formed Lake Carriers’ Association marshaled sufficient opposition to rafting that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers agreed to hold hearings on the controversial practice.  The association, founded in Cleveland in 1880 to represent U.S. Great Lakes vessel owners, demanded that severe restrictions be placed on rafting, particularly through the navigation channels between Lakes Superior and Huron.  The Lake Carriers’ Association wanted rafts restricted to 50 feet by 500 feet, or about 40,000 board feet of lumber.  The association also suggested that two tugs shepherd the smaller booms. [12]   Since the typical log raft at the time comprised 1 million board feet of logs or more guided by one tug, lumbermen from one end of Lake Superior to the other mobilized to fight the restrictions, which were under consideration for inclusion in Congressional River and Harbors legislation. [13]   The pro-rafting camp had strong supporters.  General Russell Alger, the Michigan lumber baron, was one of the powers behind the scenes in the national Republican Party.  Alger quietly worked to get the measure killed in Congressional conference committee. [14]

Four years later, the controversy was rendered moot when the province of Ontario established tariffs on Canadian lumber that required raw wood to be processed in the province.  Overnight, the rafting industry on the Upper Lakes literally dried up.  Some rafting continued well into the second half of the 20^th Century from Grand Marais on the U.S. North Shore to mills near Ashland, Wisconsin, but the rafting era on Lake Superior ended for all intent and purposes in 1898. >[15]