Conference Agenda

As the twentieth century began, so too did the heyday of the gasoline launch. Steam, naphtha, and electric launches gave way to gasoline-powered craft with internal combustion engines. The Great Lakes were an early center of innovation, particularly in Detroit. Many of today's household automotive names - Ford, Dodge, Olds - are intertwined with early marine engine production. In 1900, Wisconsin was the third largest producer of non-steam powered launches in the country after Michigan and New York. But this history has received little academic attention. In 2024, Wisconsin Historical Society archaeologists and volunteers investigated an anomaly in Green Bay identified during a NOAA OCS hydrographic survey. The “Little Harbor Launch” was found to be a 30-foot gasoline launch with a two-cycle marine engine. Subsequent research revealed the understudied, but dynamic history of marine engines and gasoline boats in eastern Wisconsin and the upper Great Lakes in the early 1900s.

Physical surveys and historical analyses of late nineteenth and early twentieth-century Great Lakes fishing vessels, conducted for the National Parks Service’s Historic American Engineering Record in 2021, provide critical insight into the technological development of Michigan’s commercial fishing industry. This paper will examine the historical development of the traditional Great Lakes gill-net fish tug design within the context of the evolving Great Lakes commercial fishery. Comparative analysis of several vessels once deployed in Lake Michigan, Lake Huron, and the St. Mary’s River, will address how the region’s environmental, technological, political, and social changes of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries influenced the construction and use of the industry’s iconic vessel.

Over the past decade and a half, submerged site research on the Lake Stanley bottomlands has demonstrated that traces of the Early Holocene occupation are preserved and discoverable beneath Lake Huron. The research has been directed primarily at the Middle Lake Stanley stage (10,500-8,500 BP) on the Alpena-Amberley Ridge (AAR). More recently, the scope of investigations has expanded to look at the earliest stage of Lake Stanley (11,500-10,500 BP) in both deeper water and buried contexts. Using new technologies of site discovery and laboratory analysis, the research is providing striking new evidence relating to the early inhabitants of the Great Lakes and their connections with the broader post-glacial world, as well as a much-expanded view of the unique and changing Early Holocene environment.

One of the most prevalent aspects of Mid-Michigan’s cultural heritage is its relationship to heavy industry, notably the automobile industry. At the same time, Michigan’s history is closely related to the Great Lakes, where some of the best-preserved submerged archaeological sites have been documented, including shipwrecks, aircraft wrecks, and prehistoric hunting blinds, often at the expense of archaeological research into the state's inland river systems. This paper presents preliminary data gathered to explore the relationship between inland rivers and their associated landscapes with the industrialization of local communities. Using Flint, Michigan as a case study, this paper explores the vital role the Flint River played as the city developed into a lumber and milling hub, thereby priming the city and surrounding region for wage-labor economies even before the rise of the automobile industry.

The narrow, convoluted channels of the St. Clair River delta have historically posed a constraint to Great Lakes maritime mobility by sail and steam.

From the mid-19th century, steam dredges began creating deeper, wider and straighter channels through the “Flats,” while a concurrent explosion in shipping volume far outpaced improvements. Frequent groundings and collisions resulted in blockages and shipwrecks in the overcrowded waterway.

Gradually, the casual and expedient displacement of wreckage and obstructions from the shipping channel to its margins gave way to a planned and managed approach. Like other dredge spoils, they were systematically relocated to designated dumping grounds and artificial landforms, safely removed from the path of projected improvements.

The freighter John N. Glidden, sunk by collision in 1903, offers archival, cartographic and archaeological evidence reuniting a nameless wreckage site with the story of its sinking, demolition, removal and rediscovery.

Volunteerism is almost ubiquitous now in underwater archaeology - every diver wants to help on an archaeology project. But what makes a good program for training, use, and retention of those volunteers? The Maritime Archaeological Survey Team has been active in Lake Erie archaeology for over 25 years; it has shown staying power in the education portion, but struggled with the retention of volunteers for field activities. This program will discuss the current program while comparing and contrasting to other programs around the Great Lakes. We will discuss the quality of surveys while staying as inclusive as possible, the lessons learned around the completion of projects, and honesty about what these programs can and can't provide to a professional archaeologist.

Until approximately 3,700 years ago, Lake Erie was lower than it is today, allowing human habitation on large portions of the modern lake floor. The Pennsylvania portion of the lake floor included the margins of two smaller lakes connected by a stream overlooked by a ridge, making it a particularly attractive place for settlement. Subsequent breaches in glacial dams and stone sills led to rapid inundation of the Lake Erie floor, possibly preserving archaeological material in situ. The authors conducted a sub-bottom profiler and side-scan sonar survey, followed by coring, to identify potential living surfaces. This paper summarizes the results from the first two seasons of this work and plans for future research. A portion of this research was conducted as an underwater cultural resource management field school.

As part of expansion work near the Port of Montreal’s Contrecoeur terminal, environmental surveys were conducted to support habitat restoration for endangered species in the St. Lawrence River between Verchères and Contrecoeur, Quebec, Canada. IRHMAS was commissioned to carry out underwater archaeological studies near Prunes Island and Bœufs Island. The goal was to assess the presence of archaeological remains and evaluate multidisciplinary collaboration opportunities. A remote sensing campaign with multibeam echosounder was launched in Spring 2024. While no remains surfaced near Prunes Island, a possible shipwreck-like target was detected near Bœufs Island. Fall investigations using side-scan sonar and preliminary underwater imaging revealed an ovoid structure composed of stones and vegetation. In November, surface-supplied diving confirmed it as an unidentified anthropogenic feature. Further studies led to the hypothesis that the site may be associated with Indigenous fisheries, and has undergone significant alteration due to the seaway development and coastal erosion.