Circa 1899. "Sidewheeler City of Alpena." 8x10 inch dry plate glass negative, Detroit Publishing Company. View full size.

        The CITY OF ALPENA, launched from the Detroit Dry Dock Co. in Wyandotte in 1893, was one of several elegant paddlewheel steamboats operated by the Detroit & Cleveland Line out of Detroit. The line dated to 1849 and eventually included 10 large vessels, serving ports all over Lake Erie and Lake Huron.

        The impressive CITY OF ALPENA and sister ship CITY OF MACKINAC were 285 feet long and driven by 2,000-horsepower steam engines. They carried as many as 400 passengers along with significant cargoes of package freight, merchandise and foodstuffs. They provided a critical link to big cities like Toledo, Detroit and Saginaw in the years before completion of railroads and highways to the communities of booming Northeast Michigan.

        The CITY OF ALPENA was taken off the "Coast Line to Mackinac" in 1921 when the lumbering industry had moved to the West Coast and railroads connected most of the towns in the region. She operated afterward on Lake Michigan as the CITY OF SAUGATUCK, and ended up in the late 1930s as a barge, carrying pulpwood and later petroleum products. The once-proud ship was broken up for scrap in 1957.

-- C. Patrick Labadie, Historian
Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary