Michigan

Canal History

Being surrounded by three of the Great Lakes and Lake St. Clair, there was little push to develop canals through Michigan. Instead most people think of Great Lakes shipping and ship watching along the Detroit and Lake St. Clair Rivers and the Soo Locks at Sault Ste. There were some smaller canals that were constructed to connect the interior lands and the lakes.

The waterways of Michigan taken from the Inland Waterways of North America by David Edwards-May.

The Soo Locks at Sault Ste. Marie serve to connect Lakes Huron and Superior. The locks by-pass the 21-foot falls on the St. Mary’s River, allowing Great Lakes shipping that are using the St. Lawrence Seaway to continue further west to Duluth and Green Bay. Although ships can be spotted all along the route, the visitors center and viewing platform in Sault Ste Marie offer eye-level views of the massive ships. The Soo Locks are operated by the USACE. Ship traffic can be followed on sites such as MarineTraffic.com

The Saginaw River is a 22-mile-long river that is maintained as a navigation channel by the United State Army Corps of Engineers. The river is deep dredged between Saginaw Bay on Lake Huron and Green Point, where the Tittabawassee and Shiawassee Rivers join to become the Saginaw.

The Clinton and Kalamazoo Canal would have created a cross-state connection between Lake St. Clair and Lake Michigan. Construction began on 1838 near Mt. Clemens on Lake St. Clair and and only reached as far as Rochester.

The Keweenaw Waterway began as the Portage Lake and Lake Superior Canal Company in the 1860s. The lake-level route is a combination of man-made channels and natural waterways. It has no locks. It is operated by the USACE.

The Inland Waterway or the North Michigan Waterway was a project that would have created a shortcut between Lakes Huron and Michigan. The 38-mile-long waterway was completed to Crooked Lake but the final two miles to Lake Michigan were never constructed. The waterway remains open to recreational boats.

Canal Groups and Organizations

The Clinton and Kalamazoo Canal Society is a volunteer membership organization that works to preserve the history of this canal which would have spanned the state between the Clinton and Kalamazoo Rivers. The canal was only completed between Mt. Clemens on Lake St. Clair to Rochester. (You can see it just above Detroit.)

The Inland Water Route Historical Society is a volunteer membership organization that works to maintain and preserve the history of the waterway. They have a museum in Alanson.

Major Repositories and Archives Canal Museums

Canal Index Pages

The “canal index” project is an on-going project of the ACS to document canal sites. Most of the information is from the 1970-1990 time period, however new pages are being added. Feel free to contribute to this project by submitting a form.

Note: Canals in blue and underlined have index sheets which are accessible by double clicking on the hyperlink.

Please note that many of these are the actual pages done in the early 1970s.  Changes have occurred since and there are some inaccuracies in the information on the pages.

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Revised 08/25/2019