Uncle Harvey's Mausoleum

the building

EDIT: The History
The Cribs (Uncle Harvey's Mausoleum)
An ice house, a bunker, a prohibition days casino, a commercial fishing dock?-- all are legends regarding this concrete experiment still defying the full force of Lake Superior storms.

On federal navigation charts it is a hazard simply referred to as "cribs." In fact, it is the ruins of an energetic but short-lived commercial enterprise by Whitney Brothers of Superior, Wisconsin. It was Harvey Whitney's brain-child. The world will now know the true story -- an unromantic but intriguing one for sure.

The structure was a sand and gravel hopper, built in the winter of 1919 and abandoned in 1922. It was a frantic era of Duluth construction in 1919 and Harvey was looking for efficiencies for his sand and gravel operation. He didn't like the canal congestion, especially in the heavy summer months. He took a chance that the city would revive efforts to rebuild the Outer Harbor Breakwater which had been abandoned in 1872.

It was a fancy idea. Sand from the lake around the Apostle Island and gravel from Grand Marais were hauled to Duluth on the scow, LIMIT, using the steam tug William A. Whitney. The LIMIT was tied to the concrete foundation structure and unloaded to the steel hopper with two steam powered clam shells. A large conveyor belt on a trestle carried the materials to shore where they were dropped on top of a tunnel into which trucks would maneuver for loading. This tunnel is where the casino activity is said to have occurred.

But, Harvey Whitney guessed wrong on the breakwater. For 66 years now the primary use of the cribs has been by scuba divers and nesting ducks. The greatest of the Great Lakes was just too powerful -- just too unpredictable. He tried to deal with Superior on its terms -- and lost. Thus, his family named it "Uncle Harvey's Mausoleum".

Lake Superior, Duluth MN

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