Great Lakes Patrol assigned to operate against criminals who were ravaging the logging industry. These so called timber pirates conducted illegal cutting of timber on federal land and then smuggled the valuable commodity out of the area in order to sell it. The areas most affected were in the western Great Lakes region, along the coasts of Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois and Minnesota. Much of these forested areas controlled by the government were reserved for the building of new warships. The illegal timber trade centered on Chicago and Milwaukee. It was nearly as violent as the alcohol trade, which was carried out over the
National Museum of the Great Lakes National Museum of the Great Lakes The National Museum of the Great Lakes is a museum in the Toledo Maritime Center, a heritage location on the banks of the Maumee River on the east side of Toledo, Ohio. Operated by the Great Lakes Historical Society, it celebrates the natural and built heritage of the North American Great Lakes from a U.S. perspective. The museum is most noted as the docking location of a museum Lake freighter, the SS "Col. James M. Schoonmaker". The National Museum of the Great Lakes (NMGL) grew out of the Great Lakes Historical Society, a nonprofit