Fortified

 

Fort Wilkins, Copper Harbor MI

 

This fort was established in 1844.

It was built to protect the Copper Boom interests of resource extractors and other wealth seekers against their Indian neighbors. And, I suppose, whatever other potential marauders might emerge from the scary woods.

The nation's first great mineral rush exploded in earnest near here long about 1843. Depending on who you ask, it ended sometime in '46.

That's the thing with booms. They go bust. Remember, it's not boom 'or' bust, it's "and."

About then, the nation found fresh need for soldiers to feed the war with Mexico and the soldiering business was on the rise. The copper boom having already gone bust, Fort Wilkins was abandoned in '47.

Or only three short years after there'd been a crying need for it, give or take. Just a caretaker remained.

For a brief time after the Civil War, the Army used the site to warehouse soldiers serving out what were by then pointless enlistments. It's said that made Fort Wilkins a morass of boredom relieved mostly by drunkenness.

I wouldn't know. But knowing where the thing is and a bit about men too, I shouldn't be surprised. Trust me, it was a long ways away from anywhere, then.

Hell. It's still a long ways away from most places.

In 1870, Fort Wilkins was permanently abandoned by the Feds.

Come 1923, the State of Michigan acquired the surrounding land for a park. What remained of the fort was stabilized and the place was later rebuilt by the WPA, which sturdy recreation is largely what you'll find there today. If spare original parts  remain, I don't know it.

Out of its entire one hundred seventy-eight year existence and counting, the place we call Fort Wilkins was an actual fort for less than a single decade, all told. Yet with hardly more than a passing Indian to be seen there, even today.

So there's that.

Grand Portage MN

 

For probably a couple millennia, native people's canoeing south from their summer homes toward winter hunting grounds faced 22 mi. of waterfalls and rapids on the lower Pigeon River as it rushed to Lake Superior. Early on, they blazed a trail of nearly two thirds shorter length through wilderness, upon which they seasonably transported all they owned.

This footpath was called the Great Carrying Place.

Later, voyageurs likewise needing to get from there to here used the same trail. It became the Grand Portage. Voyageurs built a fort at its terminus. They called that Fort Charlotte and it was actually at trail's end near the mouth of the Pigeon River.

Unlike the place named for that same legendary trail, which instead is located some miles south from there.

In any event, the Lake Superior fur trade flourished. During the shakeout between the Britain Empire and these still newly minted United States of really big America, the NW Company completely disassembled its summer headquarters at Grand Portage. Then they hauled it up the big lake in pieces to the Kaministiquia River, located in still safely British Ontario.

There from that same materiel, they first built now beloved Fort William. God Save the Queen.

In 1854 the U.S. signed a treaty with the Ojibwa ceding Grand Portage over to them. In 1887, the government took it back and opened the place to general development. Most of what we know of the original NW Company depot at Grand Portage comes from archeology, so at this fort there's no genuine article left, just ongoing story wedded to historic ground.

Today the land beneath Grand Portage National Monument is again Sovereign Nation. The Brits have their monument there and the good folk of MN value the last dependable tourist stop on the trail, before entering the true northern wilds of still vaguely royal Canada.

Unless you're taking the ferry from Grand Portage out to Isle Royale, that is. But that'd be a whole different story.

 

(Old) Fort William, Thunder Bay Ontario

 

Fort William's first iteration came in 1803, with the aforementioned relocation of the Fur King's headquarters, apparently taken lock stock & barrel out of Grand Portage and then rebuilt. No doubt better than ever.

Even in loyal Canada, a fort was needed to protect free if not fair trade.

This fort served its purpose well until 1821 and harder times, at which point the Hudson's Bay Company swallowed the NW Company and short-lived William was officially played out.

I imagine it as an awesome haven for the local kids. What grand notions they must have enjoyed.

In 1902 the site's last original stone structure was bulldozed by the railroad. Progress rumbled on, but cultural memory took root.

Spurred by handed down tales of a briefly proud Fort William, locals petitioned the Ontario government to recreate classic fort life somewhere safe. Fourteen miles upriver from the original site, they did.

There, a new improved Fort William was officially rechristened as "Old," presumably to avoid confusion.

Still, for all the reasons folk thought that a good idea, it turned out to be. Today this park in more or less suburban Thunder Bay is the most vibrant of half sister Grand Portage and their cousin a couple times removed, Fort Wilkins.

Alone among these three, the last time I looked First Nations people were dynamic participants and had retaken ownership of their own story. My memory of the youngish Native woman who on a sparkling summer day introduced me to the joys of popped wild rice as opposed to buttered corn remains a sustaining delight.

Geez Louise that stuff was good.

Sometimes the right land for a a good fort is where you find it. Then old times and strange sounding names don't count for as much, because they were never there.

Or if they were, are long gone and unknowable.