The Duluth, South Shore & Atlantic Railway: A History of the Lake Superior District's Pioneer Iron Ore Hauler by John Gaertner (review)

132 Michigan Historical Review John Gaertner. The Duluth, South Shore & Atlantic Railway: A History of the Lake Superior District’s Pioneer Iron Ore Hauler. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009. Pp. 349. Appendix. Bibliography. Illustrations. Index. Maps. Notes. Cloth, $49.95. Formed in 1887 from earlier short-line railroads, the Duluth, South Shore & Atlantic Railway (DSS&A) served Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and northern Wisconsin until it was merged into the Soo Line in 1961. At its most extensive, it ran from Duluth, Minnesota, through northern Wisconsin to Sault Ste. Marie and St. Ignace, Michigan. The latter towns were as close as it ever got to the Atlantic seaboard. The road was controlled through nearly all of its history by the Canadian Pacific Railroad, which treated it as something of a stepchild. As the book’s subtitle indicates, the DSS&A served the Upper Peninsula’s iron fields but it also carried the region’s timber products and passengers as well. Competing with other roads for the traffic of a thinly populated territory, it seldom made money. When the area’s iron and timber resources became depleted and highways increasingly cut into passenger and freight traffic, the road frequently trimmed its services and trackage. It never became part of an intercontinental trunk line as its promoters occasionally hoped. The Duluth, South Shore & Atlantic Railway is a business history written from management’s point of view. Labor and community relations are seldom mentioned. The text, moreover, is exceedingly dense. John Gaertner has done a more than commendable job of research into the road’s records and related sources. He has produced a reference book that no one should ever need to duplicate. But there is a serious forest vs. trees problem: seventy-four years of relentless operational detail are so rarely leavened by summary or evaluation that the book is a burden to read. Of great help, on the other hand, are the maps amply distributed throughout the book, something that cannot be said of every railroad history. There are many illustrations as well, primarily of rolling stock. And finally there is an appendix containing for the years 1886 to 1960 a complete locomotive roster; a fifteen-page list of all stations with the years in which they operated; and a year-by-year list of operating statistics—including miles covered, earnings, expenses, passengers carried, and freight tonnage moved. John Gaertner has done this part of his work very well indeed. Allen W. Trelease University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Emeritus ...