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By Rob Alway, Editor-in-Chief
SAULT STE. MARIE, Mich. — Monday morning began with a return visit to downtown Sault Ste. Marie, this time to tour the Museum Ship Valley Camp, one of the Great Lakes’ premier maritime museums.
As a member of the board of directors of the Mason County Historical Society, which operates the Port of Ludington Maritime Museum, I always enjoy visiting other museums. Beyond simply learning history, I find myself paying attention to how exhibits are organized, how stories are presented and what ideas might be applicable elsewhere. Every museum has something to teach.
The Valley Camp began life in 1917 as the Louis W. Hill, built by the American Ship Building Company at Lorain, Ohio. During nearly five decades of service, she sailed under several owners before being renamed Valley Camp in 1955 after joining Wilson Marine Transit Company. She hauled iron ore, coal, grain, stone and even automobiles before retiring in 1966 after logging more than three million miles on the Great Lakes. Rather than being scrapped, she found a second life when she arrived in Sault Ste. Marie in 1968 as a museum ship.
Unlike many museum ships that focus primarily on the vessel itself, the Valley Camp uses its enormous cargo holds as galleries devoted to Great Lakes maritime history. More than 100 exhibits fill the spaces that once carried iron ore and coal, making it as much a maritime museum as a preserved freighter.
I expected to enjoy the ship. What surprised me was the depth of the exhibits. In many ways, it may have been a little too much information. I appreciate in-depth history, but modern museums also need to appeal to visitors who often prefer shorter, more digestible bursts of information. While I found myself reading several of the panels, I suspect many casual visitors simply move from one display to the next without absorbing much of the excellent research that has gone into them.
One display chronicles the history of the American Ship Building Company, once the largest shipbuilder on the Great Lakes. Another explains the evolution of ore transportation, from the development of taconite mining to George Hulett’s revolutionary automatic ore unloaders. Other exhibits trace the Valley Camp’s construction as the Louis W. Hill for Producers Steamship Company, its years under National Steel, its renaming by Wilson Marine Transit and its final commercial service for Republic Steel. Original documents, photographs, newspaper articles and the ship’s bronze bell bearing the name “Louis W. Hill” help connect visitors directly with the vessel’s history.
One exhibit particularly caught my attention because it illustrates something often overlooked in Great Lakes history: the human element.
A panel describing daily life aboard the Valley Camp details the responsibilities of everyone from the boatswain and watchman to the oilers, firemen and coal passers. It reminds visitors that a freighter was more than steel and steam machinery. It was a floating workplace where 32 men lived together for weeks at a time, performing jobs that demanded skill, endurance and constant attention. Another exhibit recounts a dangerous 1934 rescue in which the Louis W. Hill helped save the crew of the disabled Fort Wildoc during a fierce Lake Superior storm, reinforcing the long tradition of Great Lakes mariners coming to one another’s aid.
Walking through the crew’s quarters, engine spaces and pilothouse after reading those exhibits made the ship feel less like a museum and more like a vessel that had simply paused between voyages.
As fascinating as the Valley Camp’s own story is, I found myself thinking about Ludington.
While this ore carrier never called Ludington home the way the Flint & Pere Marquette, Pere Marquette Railway or Chesapeake & Ohio car ferries did, she represents the other half of the Great Lakes industrial transportation system. Ships like the Valley Camp carried the iron ore, coal and raw materials that fed the steel mills. The railroads and car ferries then moved finished products and freight across the region. They were different operations, but they were all part of the same vast transportation network that shaped the economy of the Great Lakes for generations.
The Valley Camp is perhaps best known as the permanent home of many of the artifacts recovered from the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. Among the most moving are the vessel’s two recovered lifeboats, silent reminders of the tragedy that claimed all 29 crew members on Nov. 10, 1975. The exhibits surrounding them are tastefully done, focusing not on sensationalism but on remembrance. Photographs of the crew, personal artifacts and interpretive displays tell the story of the Fitzgerald while honoring the men who lost their lives aboard what remains the Great Lakes’ most famous shipwreck. Standing before those exhibits, it’s difficult not to pause for a few moments of quiet reflection.
For me, the Valley Camp demonstrated that a museum ship can be much more than a preserved vessel. It can serve as a platform for telling the broader story of Great Lakes commerce, industry and the people whose lives were spent on the water. It was an excellent way to spend the better part of a Monday morning before continuing my journey home.
In my final segment of this series I am going to change direction and focus on geneology. I will reflect on the experiences of discovering graves of family members and why those graves are valuable information.
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