In this video we're going to take you to the Soo Locks which are the locks going between
Lake Superior, connecting it through the St. Marys River, to the lower Great Lakes,
and Lake Huron in particular. So let's go see some ships.
Just as we arrived there was a large ship leaving the locks,
and we raced to the top of the viewing platform to catch a glimpse.
We're up in the observation tower which is a really nice place to view the locks from,
especially because it's covered so you can be up here in all weather. You get a really
great view. Right here the first lock is the MacArthur followed by the Poe Lock and then
the Davis Lock and the Sabin Lock. The Davis and Sabin Locks are actually scheduled to be replaced
with one lock that is the same size as the Poe Lock. And for reference so you guys know how
big these things are, the Poe Lock is 1200 feet long and 110 feet wide. And even though the Poe
and the MacArthur share most of the, at least at this point since the other two are closed,
the duty of the ships coming through the Poe Lock sees the majority of the traffic.
The MacArthur Lock is a little bit shorter and narrower at 800 feet long and 80 feet
wide. We're really excited to see the Soo Locks today. They are a National Historical Landmark,
and they're really fascinating. Just learning the history of the place has been really interesting
to us, and we're learning even more now as we see it. So to give you guys a quick overview,
the first lock was opened in 1798. And it was actually a lock on the Canadian side. And then it
was destroyed in the War of 1812 by the Americans so for the next 40 plus years all the boats had
to be unloaded and cargo shipped around. And the reason for that was that there were a series of
rapids here, and the rapids dropped 21 feet so it was impassable. All the cargo had to be manually
moved around until that first lock and then again for 40 years until 1855 when the first lock on the
U.S. side, the State Lock, was constructed. The State Lock was operated by the state of Michigan
until the year 1881 when it was transferred to the federal government. And now the Army Corps
of Engineers works in tandem with the National Park Service and the State Historic Preservation
Office to maintain the locks. So the way these work is when a boat say comes in from the low
side and wants to go up, it enters the lock with the level of the water already low. They close the
gates. They pump in the water until it is at the level of the higher lake and it passes through.
When a boat wants to go in the other direction, it comes in from the high side with the water level
already up, and then they pump the water out until it is at the level of the lower lake and it moves
on. Behind the observation platform they have a visitor center which has tons of great information
inside and exhibits I hear. But this month they happen to be closed Wednesdays and Thursdays
which is when we're here. But I found so much information online. Their website is wonderful.
They have a YouTube channel. They have all these PDFs, all these PowerPoints basically that
mimic the exhibits that are in there. So I really went down the rabbit hole
you know learning all this information. It was quite fascinating, but I feel like it would be
a good thing to look through before you come here so you have a little bit of an overview before you
arrive or make sure you come on a day when you can go in the visitor center because there is so much
to know. And now we see a much smaller boat approaching. And I think this is one of the
tour boats that you can actually take a ride on and go through the locks. I think both upbound and
downbound through the locks are included in your tour. So that's pretty neat. Correction, there are
actually two boats coming. And by the different coloring I think it must be one from each of
the two boat tour companies that you can take. There's the Famous Soo Locks Boat Tour Company
and the Original Soo Locks Boat Company, something like that. All right two for the price of one.
So another couple neat things are that there are webcams that you can watch. Though I think they're
a bit delayed because on the webcams I'm just now seeing that first very large ship that we saw when
we arrived quite a while ago. But there's also another website that will show you the
positioning of the boats, and so we can tell that there is another large 1000 footer coming around
the corner here called the American Integrity. So we're gonna wait for that and see it come in.
So to finish off our time here we get to see another large ship come through. And
the really neat thing to think about is that the lock is 110 feet wide and this ship is
105 feet wide. So you get about two and a half feet you know margin for error on either side.
It's not very much. Also the other little ships that came through here, those tour boats,
you could hardly see them just the very top of their masts as they were in here when the water
was low. You can see quite a bit of this ship so I can only imagine when they raise the water
level and this thing comes up even higher what that's going to look like. Here we go.
So that was a lot of fun. We got to see multiple ships come through,
see everything up close, and learn a ton. And we highly recommend that you guys come
here as well if you get the chance. Let us know if you find that as interesting
as we do. We'll see you guys next time as we continue our travels.