A small dot appears on the Lake Michigan horizon off Waukegan one recent afternoon as residents play on lakeside beaches and parks.
The dot grows in size, and soon the Alpena, a 520-foot-long bulk cement carrier, is highlighted by brilliant afternoon sun as the ship approaches the breakwater marking the entrance to Waukegan Harbor.
Bearing a load of powdered cement for one of the industries that still ring the inner harbor, the 62-food-wide, 5,400-ton Alpena creeps up the 200-foot-wide channel, its captain mindful of the breakwalls on either side. Gulls reel and cry overhead. There are no tugboats nearby to provide assistance, but none will be needed.
Thanks to a huge bow thruster, a reversible-pitch propeller inside a 5-foot-wide tube running across the ship’s width near the bow, and skilled handling from her captain and officers, the Alpena can maneuver in tight places without help or danger of marring her ivory hull paint.
Once the ship ties up, members of its 30-man crew who are not needed for unloading troop down the gangplank with mountain bicycles and head off to explore or shop.
“It’s really not a problem entering here if the weather’s good, but if there’s wind, it gets pretty tight,” said Captain John Basel, 37, of Traverse City, Mich., a 10-year Great Lakes shipping veteran who has commanded ships during the last three. “There’s no room to compensate it. You really can’t get in here if there’s too much wind.
“The other problem we have is depth. It really isn’t too deep here, and it has shoals out there. The currents coming around the lake bring the sand and wrap it around the breakwall and make it a shallow spot. We had to go around to the south of it.
“This is one of the few harbors where you’re not going into the mouth of a river. Once you’re in here, you don’t have to worry about currents.”
The appearance of ships off Waukegan is older than the city itself. In the Chicago suburban area, Waukegan is the only Illinois community boasting a deep-water port outside Chicago. The busiest harbor between Chicago and Milwaukee and one of the busiest on Lake Michigan’s western shore, it is featured prominently in the city seal.
The number of harbor industries once served by Great Lakes shipping has dwindled, but the 37-acre harbor still is a hub of industrial activity. Although Waukegan Harbor is also a haven for recreational boaters, deep-water shipping still is vital and perhaps always will be.
As a girl growing up in Waukegan, Mary Walker, 47, remembers seeing ships in the lake from her home along Sheridan Road. Her father would load up the family in the car and drive them down to see the ships tie up in the harbor.
Now Walker is harbor manager for the Waukegan Port District. The big ships have called on the harbor some years as late as Jan. 3, before ice blocks the Straits of Mackinac and halts Great Lakes shipping for the winter. Thus, the harbor operates for 10 months some years.
“Waukegan Harbor is a part of our past,” Walker said. “At one time, everything came to the city by water. We’re still depending on it. One of the things I like about this harbor is that it’s a working harbor. It’s a good mix of a recreational and industrial harbor.”
The ships entering the harbor are the lifeblood for the four industries along the harbor’s west side that receive materials by water. Three of them, Lafarge Corp., St. Mary’s Cement of Wisconsin and Meyer Material Co., headquartered in Des Plaines, receive shipments of powdered cement. National Gypsum, maker of Gold Bond drywall products, receives shipments of its namesake product from Tawas City, Mich. Shipping these materials by water is the cheapest transportation mode.
All four destinations receive raw materials for the building trades, and that translates into jobs for construction workers as Lake County continues its growth.
The Waukegan Terminal of Lafarge, North America’s largest cement dealer, is the harbor’s busiest destination. It sometimes receives twice-weekly visits from the flagship Alpena and her sister ships of Inland Lakes Management Corp., an Alpena, Mich.-based shipping line. Each shipment weighs about 6,200 tons, and the terminal receives about 235,000 tons a year, Terminal Manager Mike Galayda said.
National Gypsum, across a docking slip from Lafarge, receives about 18 shipments of 15,500 tons each year, plant manager Hans Gordon said.
A wide variety of industries once ringed the harbor. Tons of coal were delivered to the docks of the M.H. Hussey Corp., near where Lafarge is now, and to the North Shore Gas coke plant on the harbor’s opposite side. Wheat was delivered to the Dickinson Warehouse.
The harbor once boasted three parallel deep-water slips. Two remain, including the one between Lafarge and National Gypsum and at Larsen Marine. The middle one was filled in and is occupied by National Gypsum.
Waukegan Harbor primarily has been known as a destination rather than originating point for cargo. Early cargoes included lumber, corn, barley, flax seed, wool, flour, whiskey, rock salt and coal.
In 1844, one of the earliest years Waukegan shipping traffic was recorded, 151 ships called there, carrying 202 tons of goods. Vessels were propelled by sail and steam alike. By 1850, the traffic had jumped to 1,095 ships carrying 1,202 tons.
The amount of goods crossing Waukegan’s docks fluctuates, largely because of economic conditions. The completion of the Chicago & North Western Railroad in 1855 and Elgin, Joliet & Eastern Railroad lines to Waukegan in 1890 also drained off traffic.
Lately, however, the volumes coming into Waukegan are some of the highest in harbor history, reflecting strong building activity in the Chicago area.
According to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers annual survey, Waterborne Commerce of the United States, the amount of goods shipped to Waukegan during selected years is as follows: 389,026 tons in 1891, 213,925 tons in 1911, 141,700 tons in 1921, 242,862 tons in 1931, 317,226 tons in 1941, 96,828 tons in 1951, 266,727 tons in 1961, 588,866 in 1971, 211,049 tons in 1981, and 598,000 tons in 1991.
About 530,000 tons of cargo landed in Waukegan in 1995, according to the corps.
With products such as cement, water is still one of the cheapest and fastest modes of transportation. Until the mid-1800s, that was the case for many products. Waukegan Harbor and its heavy shipping led to the city’s growth as a satellite city, independent of Chicago, said Michael H. Ebner, a professor of history at Lake Forest College and author of “Creating Chicago’s North Shore” (University of Chicago Press, $22.95).
Waukegan’s location on the lake made it the transshipment point for this series of satellite cities–Waukegan, Elgin, Aurora, Joliet and Valparaiso, Ind.–on the EJ&E Outer Belt railway and provided the rationale for constructing the railway, he said.
The harbor indirectly contributed to “an identity problem” Waukegan faced during its formative years, Ebner said.
“On the one hand, there was the notion that Waukegan was the ninth North Shore suburb,” he said. (North Chicago was vacant land at the time.) “We can see attributes of that particularly on the north side of Waukegan, where today remain beautiful Victorian homes.
“But simultaneously, because Waukegan had this natural endowment that the other communities did not have, the harbor, Waukegan tried to augment its economy with industrialization as well,” Ebner said. “As a result of that uncertainty, Waukegan was unclear what its future purpose in life would be.”
During the late 1800s and early 1900s, railroad ferries called, as did passenger steamers and tankers.
Waukegan Harbor’s popularity remained high until the Elgin, Joliet & Eastern Railroad completed its line ringing the Chicago area.
But the harbor remained important. In the late 1800s, city officials successfully appealed to the federal government for help in erecting the breakwater and 3,500-foot-long channel into the harbor to make passage safer for arriving and departing ships, especially in heavy seas.
At this point, dredging appears to be the key to Waukegan Harbor’s future. Both the Port District and City of Waukegan are pushing for it. The harbor bottom, currently about 18 feet deep, should be 20 to 23 feet deep. A deeper harbor bottom means the ships serving local industries can come in with larger loads, lowering shipping costs.
Because the harbor’s shallow depth prevents ships from arriving fully loaded, Walker said, Lafarge and National Gypsum each have to spend about an additional $300,000 a year to bring in extra boatloads of material to meet customer demands.
Currently the ships arrive about half-full. For example, the ships serving Lafarge deliver a 6,200-ton load even though they could deliver at least 12,000 tons, Galayda said. Shipping by rail or truck would be cost-prohibitive.
“It’s costing us more to do business in this area because of the harbor,” Galayda said. “We’re highly concerned about the dredging. It’s important to the construction industry as a whole.”
The major stumbling block to dredging lies within the silt on the bottom. It still is tainted with low levels of toxic polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). The chemicals were used as a lubricant at the Outboard Marine Corp. and dumped into the harbor until the 1970s.
Much of the PCBs in property surrounding the harbor have been removed during a 15-year, $22 million cleanup. But some 90,000 cubic yards of harbor bottom still must be removed. The harbor sediment must be disposed of in a special landfill.
Philip Bernstein, chief of the planning division of the Corps of Engineers’ Chicago District, said the corps will begin meeting with government agencies and citizens’ groups this summer to devise ways to dredge the harbor and clean it up at the same time.
The disposal site for the sediment can be capped with clean soil and sod and used as a park, “so it won’t be a festering sore,” he said.
“We want to develop a strategy designed to clean up the harbor in toto, no matter how deep the contaminated sediment is,” Bernstein said. “This project would not be very complicated to do. All it requires is dredging and containing (the bottom silt).”
And there still may be opportunities for increased deep-water shipping and recreation beyond boating. A proposal for ferry boat service between Waukegan and Holland, Mich., was floated in 1993 but appears to be stalled at least until the harbor can be dredged and a dock built.
And Chicago developer Richard Stein along with local partner Alan Ludwig have their eyes on property just south of the harbor, where they would like to build a dock for a floating casino if and when Illinois lawmakers choose to grant more riverboat gambling licenses and give one to Waukegan. Their plan also would include shoreline parks.
“The ships will always be a part of the area for a long time,” Walker said. “At least we hope they will.”
