Viewed from the top of the bridge

You are looking at part of the structure of the Shelldrake Dam and the foot bridge that crosses over it in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.   This dam and bridge were a part of a rustic (i.e., no modern plumbing) Michigan State Forest Campground until closed two years ago because of budget problems.

It was located just to the northwest of Paradise (see my Mighty Mac bridge photo on April 18) and southeast of Whitefish Point, off which the Edmund Fitzgerald sank in Lake Superior in November, 1975.  The "Fitz" was carrying taconite, low grade iron ore, from Superior, Wisconsin, for the steel mills of Detroit and Toledo when she sank just north of Whitefish Bay in the "gales of November;"  this tragedy of all lives lost was immortalized by Canadian folksinger Gordon Lightfoot.  For more of this story of the inland seas, go to the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum.

For more bridges from around the world, visit Louis la Vache's Sunday Bridge Series