Great Lakes Waterway River between Huron and Erie. Usually, one or more U.S. Coast Guard icebreakers help keep the water passage open for part of the fall and early winter, although shipping usually ceases for two to three months thereafter. The Great Lakes Waterway is co-administered by the governments of Canada and the United States of America. The waterway allows passage from the Atlantic Ocean to the inland port of Duluth on Lake Superior, a distance of and to Chicago, on Lake Michigan, at . Together with the Saint Lawrence Seaway, the Waterway allows both ocean-going vessels and the ore, grain and coal-bearing
North Shore (Lake Superior) at Silver Bay, and it quickly became the major taconite shipping port. Minnesota taconite produces over half of the iron mined in Minnesota at the present date. Northern Minnesota is essentially covered with one large forest. Although the potential for a lumber industry was recognized early in the course of European settlement, the distances that it would have to be shipped made it uneconomical. But as eastern forests were logged out, the lumber industry moved into Wisconsin and Minnesota.. Lumber and forest products were shipped by rail from Duluth and Superior, Wisconsin to southern and eastern mills. Because of conservation