Located along the shores of Lake Superior, along the three mile
long boardwalk and biking trail is the Cribs, also known as Uncle
Harvey's Mausoleum.
There are conflicting stories on just what the cribs are,
ranging from a prohibition era bootleg casino and storage to a
fishing dock.
The official story is that is the remains of a commercial
enterprise gone bad.
The story, not nearly as romantic as the prohibition stories is
still quite interesting. Built in 1919 as a sand and gravel hopper
by an enterprising man named Whitney. In 1919 the Lake Superior
area was a hotbed of activity and Whitney didn't like the
congestion of the harbor area especially in the busy summer months.
So this contraption was built. It was abandoned in 1922.
There is a plaque at the site and it reads:
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”.