-- Soo Locks Boat Tour --
Two separate tour boat companies take tourists through the locks. When I asked at the visitor center if one was better than the other, I was told that one of the companies split off from the other, and they run identical tours. So I went with the one that was closest, and took their 10:00 am tour.
The tour boat goes through whatever locks it gets assigned by the lock master. The locks are run by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. I was surprised to learn that boats and ships are not charged a fee for passing through the locks -- it is completely free for both commercial and recreational ships/boats. There are minimum requirements, such as the boat must have a motor and a minimum length, but captains just have to call ahead and get a lock assignment from the lock master.
There are two sets of locks currently operating on the American side of the river. We got assigned to go through the MacArthur Lock, which is the smaller of the two. It is on the left side of the photo below. The MacArthur Lock can handle ships up to 730 feet in length and 80 feet wide. The other lock, the Poe Lock on the right side of the photo, is larger, and can handle the 1,000 foot long ships that transport iron ore across the great lakes. A third, even larger lock, is in the process of being constructed.
The difference in height between Lake Superior and Lake Huron is 21 feet, so that is the size of the rise or drop when passing through the locks. The locks are on the St Marys River. Lake Superior is 15 miles to the north.
The MacArthur Lock requires 10 million gallons of water to raise the water level the 21 feet from the Lake Huron level to the Lake Superior level. The larger Poe Lock requires 22 million gallons of water to do the same thing. The locks are filled from upstream water, using valves and tunnels, and are emptied in in the same manner, into the downstream river.
In the photo below, our boat is entering the MacArthur lock from the lower, Lake Huron side. After the gates close behind us, the water will be raised 21 feet until it reaches the level of Lake Superior, and then the gates will open in front of us and we will continue up the St Marys river. A glass enclosed observation deck is visible above the locks, on the left of the photo.
Here we are inside the lock, before and after the water has risen. The high water mark is visible on the side of the lock. After the water has risen, we are much closer to the people watching us from the observation deck.
A metal arm is a safety measure to protect the lock gates in case a ship gets too close and could potentially hit the gates. There is one at each end of the locks, and it is raised before we leave. The yellow automobile bridge between the United States and Canada is visible in the the distance, as is the black draw bridge used by trains.
All the commercial ships use the American locks. The Canadian locks, although they were the longest locks in the world when they were built, sustained some damage, and after their repair are only used for recreational boats like our tour boat.
After passing through the American locks, we went north, past piles of construction materials for the larger American locks now under construction.
Then we passed an operating Canadian steel mill, as we turned downriver to pass through the smaller Canadian locks and finish our boat tour. It was interesting to see the operating steel mill. It's design looked similar to the design of the decomissioned "Carrie Furnaces" steel mill I toured in Pittsburgh. The raw materials are brought in by ship. The coal is heated in separate ovens behind the furnace to produce coke, and the coke, iron ore, and limestone are fed into the furnace to produce steel. The limestone is a catalyst that produces a chemcal reaction between the coke and iron ore, and carries off the waste as slag.
On our way to the Canadian locks, we passed by the finished coils of steel waiting to be shipped.
After we pulled up to the front of the the Canadian Locks, the rear gates closed behind us, the water drained to the lower Lake Huron level, the front gates opened, and we continued our journey.
After passing through the locks, we could see the St Marys River rapids on our right. If the locks weren't here, ships would have to navigate through the rapids when passing between the lakes.
The boat ride was fun and informative, and I'm glad I took it. Before we docked at our original location, we passed a power generation plant on the American side of the river. People in boats were fishing below the plant.
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-- Soo Locks Visitor Center --
Afer the boat tour, I went to the Soo Locks Visitor Center. The visitor center and observation deck are also run by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The traffic that passes through the locks is important to the U.S. economy. The whole area is a protected site, and you have to pass through guards to get inside.
I watched from the observaton deck as a large ship finished passing through the larger Poe locks from Lake Superior to Lake Huron. By the time I got there, the water in the lock had already been lowered, so only the top of the ship was visible until it cleared the lock area and headed downstream.
I returned later and watched another large ship passing through the Poe Locks from Lake Superior to Lake Huron. The first photo, below, shows the ship at the higher Lake Superior level, and the second photo shows it at the Lake Huron level after the water had been drained from the lock. Only the top of the ship is visible in the second photo.
The visitor center has a lot of good information. It has a computer monitor showing the ships scheduled to arrive from both directions at the locks. The locks are open 10 months of the year. They are closed for maintenance, drained, and inspected between January and March. It is a good time to perform maintenance because the shipping lanes are too frozen that time of year. The lake gets up to 5 feet of ice.
A sign shows estimated sailing times between the locks and various destinations.
The visitor center also has samples of the most popular cargo that gets transported through the locks.
-- Iron Ore pellets (called Taconite) from mines in northern Minnesota and Michigan's western upper peninsula (the leftmost item in the photo above), are the most plentiful item shipped through the locks. An average of 40 million tons of iron ore pass through the Soo Locks from Lake Superior to Lake Huron each year.
-- Coal (second from the left, above), travels in both directions... hard coal comes from Montana and Wyoming mines, and soft coal comes in the other direction from Pennsylvania and Kentucky mines. An average of 13.3 million tons of coal pass through the locks each year.
-- The northern area of the Great Lakes has rich limestone deposits. An average of 4.5 million tons of limestone (second from the right in the photo above) pass through the locks each year.
-- 9 million tons of grain from the North American prairies also pass through the locks each year on their way to the St Lawrence Seaway.
Large freighters are efficient for transporting heavy payloads such as iron ore across large distances. $500.4 billion worth of iron ore is shipped through the Soo Locks each year.
A diagram in the visitor center, above, explains how the locks work. Opening one set of valves and closing the others allows water to either fill or empty the lock. Below is a photo of one of valves. They found that having tunnels and filling/empting the locks from below caused less turbulance than filling/emptying them from the sides of the lock or gates.
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