Kewaunee: Where Lake Michigan’s railroad carferry era began and ended

Kewaunee lighthouse

This Great Lakes History Log is presented by Filer Credit Union, the Port of Ludington Maritime Museum and Sable Points Media. 

By Rob Alway, Editor-in-Chief

On Saturday, Aug. 22, I made what amounted to a maritime pilgrimage to Kewaunee, Wis., a small city whose history is inseparably connected to the development — and eventual end — of railroad carferry service across Lake Michigan.

Kewaunee is a city of fewer than 3,000 people. The 2020 census counted 2,837. Yet its location at the mouth of the Kewaunee River gave the community an importance far beyond its size. Its protected harbor provided railroads with a western Lake Michigan terminal connected to Green Bay and the rail network extending across Wisconsin and into Minnesota.

That connection made Kewaunee an efficient gateway between western railroads and Michigan. Instead of routing freight around the southern end of Lake Michigan and through Chicago’s congested rail yards, loaded railcars could be placed aboard a ship, carried across the lake and returned directly to the tracks on the other side.

My first stop was Harbor Point Park, at the end of Hathaway Drive. The small park occupies part of the former Kewaunee carferry terminal, including the site of the Kewaunee, Green Bay and Western Railroad’s ferry slip No. 1.

Carferries entering Kewaunee channel.

This was where Lake Michigan railroad carferry history began.

The railroad reached Kewaunee in 1891. Freight was initially transferred between railcars and ships by hand, a time-consuming process known as break-bulk shipping. The cargo had to be removed from a railcar, loaded aboard a vessel and then placed into another railcar after reaching the opposite shore.

The Toledo, Ann Arbor and North Michigan Railway, predecessor of the Ann Arbor Railroad, changed that in 1892. The railroad had reached Frankfort, Mich., with its terminal actually located at Elberta on the south side of Betsie Lake. Kewaunee was the nearest major Wisconsin port and already had a connection with western rail lines.

The wooden-hulled Ann Arbor No. 1 left Elberta on its first trip Nov. 24, 1892. Its arrival did not go smoothly. The ship ran aground north of Kewaunee and remained there for two days before being freed.

Wisconsin state historical marker at Harbor Point Park in Kewaunee.

On Sunday, Nov. 27, the Ann Arbor No. 1 loaded 22 railcars of flour at Kewaunee. The flour had originated in Minneapolis and was bound for England, Scotland and Ireland. It became the first full boatload of boxcars transported across Lake Michigan without unloading their contents. Kewaunee’s Wisconsin historical marker commemorates that shipment and identifies the adjoining slip as the birthplace of Lake Michigan railroad carferry service.

Ludington entered the railroad carferry business five years later when the Flint & Pere Marquette Railway’s first carferry, Pere Marquette, began operating in February 1897. Ludington’s fleet eventually served Kewaunee, Manitowoc and Milwaukee. At the height of the service during the 1950s, seven Ludington-based carferries operated year-round, carrying railcars, automobiles and passengers between Michigan and Wisconsin. The F&PM had been shipping break-bulk freight from railcars across the lake since 1875, six months after the railroad reached Ludington.

By the 1970s and 1980s, however, improved land routes and declining rail traffic made the ferries increasingly difficult to operate profitably. Milwaukee and Manitowoc were eventually dropped as rail-ferry destinations, leaving Kewaunee as the final Wisconsin port served by the Ludington fleet.

The former site of Slip No. 1, looking south toward the channel.

Chessie System, which included a merger between the Chesapeake & Ohio and Baltimore & Marilyn railroads, ended its Lake Michigan carferry operation on June 30, 1983. On July 1, 1983, the newly formed Michigan-Wisconsin Transportation Co. took over the Ludington operation.

Chessie sold its three remaining carferries—the Badger, Spartan and City of Midland 41—to a group led by Ludington businessman Glen F. Bowden.

When MW-T assumed the Ludington carferry operation it initially relied on the City of Midland 41 for the Ludington-Kewaunee run. It had attempted to run the Badger from Ludington to Milwaukee in the summer but that venture was determined unsuccessful after a couple seasons. The Badger was laid up in 1984. A 1987 Coast Guard inspection found that the City of Midland’s boiler mounts had deteriorated and required costly replacement. After receiving a one-year waiver, M-WT refurbished the Badger as its replacement. The City of Midland completed its final crossing in November 1988, after which the Badger became the company’s operating ferry and continued carrying railroad cars between Ludington and Kewaunee.

Postcard of the City of Midland 41 docked at Slip No. 1 in Kewaunee in 1983.

The SS Badger made its final Kewaunee trip in November 1990, ending nearly 98 years of Lake Michigan railroad carferry service. The ship returned to service in 1992 carrying automobiles, trucks and passengers between Ludington and Manitowoc, but railcars never again crossed the lake.

Kewaunee was therefore both the beginning and the end. It was one end of the route when the first railcars crossed Lake Michigan in 1892, and it remained the western terminal when the last railroad carferry operation ended in 1990.

Standing at Harbor Point Park, I tried to imagine the activity that once surrounded the site: locomotives switching freight cars, the sounds of railcars rolling across the apron and onto a ship, whistles echoing through the harbor and carferries arriving after crossing Lake Michigan. I have seen films and photographs but never got to witness the Kewaunee port when it was bustling with carferry traffic.

Unfortunately, the park itself felt a little neglected. The Wisconsin historical marker, erected in 1964, was faded and chipped. Portions of the waterfront boardwalk were warped, and the park generally seemed a little run down.

Father Marquette Park in Kewaunee.

That was a shame. This is not simply the location of an abandoned industrial dock. It is one of the most significant transportation sites on Lake Michigan — the place where an innovation transformed cross-lake commerce and helped shape the railroad and maritime histories of Michigan and Wisconsin.

About a half-mile away, I stopped at Father Marquette Memorial Park. Long before railroads or carferries came to Kewaunee, the original mouth of the Kewaunee River was located near the present park. The river was later redirected to form the modern harbor.

According to local history, Father Jacques Marquette offered Mass at the site on Nov. 1, 1674, while traveling south from the mission at St. Francis Xavier near present-day De Pere. A large stone monument erected by the Kewaunee County Historical Society in 1936 commemorates the event. The site is a reminder that Kewaunee’s history stretches back centuries before its development as a railroad and maritime center. The Wisconsin Historical Society notes that the area was also home to a substantial Potawatomi village during the 17th century.

The Marquette connection reaches naturally across Lake Michigan to Mason County. The French Jesuit missionary, known as Père Marquette, worked among Native peoples throughout the Great Lakes region. In 1673, he accompanied French-Canadian explorer Louis Jolliet from St. Ignace through Green Bay and the Fox-Wisconsin waterway to the Mississippi River. Although the expedition made Marquette famous as an explorer and cartographer, he considered himself primarily a missionary. After spending the winter of 1674-1675 near present-day Chicago, he continued to the Illinois River, fulfilling a promise to return to the Kaskaskia people.

The tugboat Ludington.

Already seriously ill, Marquette then began traveling north toward St. Ignace. He died May 18, 1675, at age 37, along the Lake Michigan shoreline near the mouth of the river that now bears his name. Local tradition places his death on what is now the Buttersville Peninsula, south of Ludington, where the Pere Marquette Memorial Cross overlooks Lake Michigan and Pere Marquette Lake. His companions buried him near the shore. Two years later, a party of Native converts returned for his remains and carried them ceremonially to St. Ignace. Although the precise location of his death cannot be established with certainty, the peninsula corresponds with early French accounts and maps. The monuments at Kewaunee and Buttersville therefore mark two points along the same missionary’s final travels, connecting the opposite shores of Lake Michigan through a history that began long before the railroad carferries linked them.

From Father Marquette Park, I could look across the harbor entrance toward the Kewaunee Pierhead Lighthouse. The current lighthouse was first placed into service on the south pier in 1912. In November 1930, Ann Arbor No. 3 struck the pier and damaged the lighthouse’s original open-frame tower. During the subsequent repairs, a square tower was constructed above the fog-signal building, giving the lighthouse the appearance it retains today.

The lighthouse guided countless carferries into Kewaunee, including vessels of the Ann Arbor, Pere Marquette and C&O fleets. It was automated in 1981. The city acquired it in 2011, and the lighthouse and pier were added to the state and national registers of historic places in 2022. Its preservation offers a sharp contrast to the more subdued remains of the carferry terminal across the harbor. Friends of the Kewaunee Pierhead Lighthouse has undertaken an ongoing restoration of the structure.

I also stopped to see the tug Ludington, now moored along the Kewaunee waterfront. Naturally, its name immediately caught the attention of someone from Ludington.

The 115-foot tug was built in 1943 at Jacobson Shipyard in Oyster Bay, N.Y., for the U.S. Army and was originally named Major Wilbur Fr. Browder. During World War II, it participated in the D-Day invasion, towing ammunition barges across the English Channel. It later assisted harbor operations at Cherbourg, France.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers transferred the tug to Kewaunee in 1947 and renamed it Ludington. For nearly five decades it assisted with the construction and maintenance of Great Lakes harbors. The city acquired the vessel through the Federal Surplus Program in 1995, with the formal transfer completed the following year. Volunteers subsequently helped restore it for public tours. The tug was placed on the state and national registers of historic places in 2002. The city of Kewaunee continues to maintain it as a museum ship.

My visit to Kewaunee was brief, but the city’s connection to Ludington and Lake Michigan’s railroad carferries was apparent everywhere. The former slips, the lighthouse and even a tug named Ludington all connect this small Wisconsin harbor with the transportation history of west Michigan.

The most meaningful stop, though, was Harbor Point Park. Few places can claim to have witnessed both the beginning and the end of an entire transportation system. Loaded railcars first crossed Lake Michigan through Kewaunee in 1892. The last railroad carferry service ended there 98 years later.

That story deserves to be preserved — and the place where it happened deserves greater care.

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