Live History at the Soo's 350th Birthday Bash

Summer road trip north

July 14, 2018

Michigan's oldest city is throwing a week-long birthday party, and while you may not find a cake that boasts 350 candles, you will find 3 ½ centuries of layered history amid the music, games, Native American craft demonstrations … and a 1600s-themed escape room. 

If you can catch just one event, local historian Bernie Arbec might tell you to eat the fish, perhaps in the opening night's fish fry cook-off. Whitefish, he says, is maybe the key reason Michigan's oldest city came to be.

“The reason the Chippewa were here was because of the whitefish in the rapids,” he said. “The Jesuits set up camp because of the Chippewa — to convert the Chippewa. They came to fish for souls, or so they'd describe their mission in early writings.”

Native Americans, whose legends place them around Sault Ste. Marie from the beginning of creation,  named it Bawating, or “place of the rapids.” The plentiful fish drew tribes from around the Great Lakes during spawning, and they'd all feast together. You can explore that history July 20–26 at party events like demonstration of games of La Crosse — played as tribes did against one another more than 350 years ago — or check out artifacts on display every day of the year in the museum called the Tower of History. From a platform 210 feet up, you can also look out onto Canada and the St. Mary's River, which flows between Lake Huron and Lake Superior and see how the area is connected to lands beyond.

Early fur traders renamed this region Sault de Gaston after the brother of the French king, and if you doubt the importance of this chapter of the region's history, consider that by the year 1800, the value of beaver skins carried through the Sault by the Northwest Fur Company alone was estimated at $1 million (in 1800-era dollars). Father Jacques Marquette tweaked the name a bit, adding the Ste. Marie to honor the Virgin Mary when he officially settled the community in 1668. His historic landing is depicted in a mural with a modern twist. It's painted on the outside of the “1668 Winery and Lockside Brewery.”

Geography is key, too, to the region's settlement. The Soo Locks were not put in Michigan's relatively remote Upper Peninsula as a tourism draw — though Upper Peninsula Tourism and Recreation Association Director Tom Nemacheck says he gets that question far too often. To understand why this region was — and still is — an international center of commerce, you have to look at water routes instead of roads. The Soo was the crossroads for a 3,000 mile fur trade route stretching from Montreal— and you can live that past in exhibits in the city's River of History or Valley Camp, a museum on a boat.

Then came the discovery of copper and other mining riches that kept the Upper Peninsula a key international trade route stop. But before the construction of the Soo Locks, it would take up to six weeks to haul a several hundred ton schooner around the 21-foot drop between Lake Superior and Lake Huron at the rapids. Now, you can take a daily trip on the Soo Locks Boat Tours and “lock through” alongside a 1,100-foot freighter, living some modern-day commerce history as you're raised or lowered in minutes. Freighter spotting is almost sport here, evidenced by the crowds that gather inside the Soo Locks Visitor Center to watch the flashing lights on a board that marks the ever-moving locations of incoming and outgoing ships.

You can also go old-school, traveling voyageur-style in a sense, on a paddling trip offered through Bird's Eye Adventures. The company lets you glimpse freighters from a waterline point of view as you travel through the more park-like Canadian locks, perhaps alongside loons, bald eagles, osprey and deer. You also pass near the remaining rapids, a spot Ernest Hemingway once mentioned in an August 1920 piece in the Toronto Star Weekly. He wrote: “The best rainbow fishing in the world is the Rapids at the Canadian Soo.”

However you choose to do it, just focus on the water this key birthday year, advises Linda Hoath, executive director of the Sault Ste Marie Convention and Visitors Bureau.

“We want people to see how the river and water are so important to us,” she said. “You can see the progress through the years and how we're such an intricate part of the country and world because of what we have with the Soo Locks. And it's not just 350 years we'll be celebrating but the thousands of years of Native American settlement before that.”

JOIN THE BIRTHDAY BASH
You're in for a special celebration when helping to honor one of the country's oldest cities — older even than relatively spry New Orleans, which is only 300 this year. Sault Ste. Marie is culminating a year of events celebrating its semiseptennial (350th) with a family-friendly weekend July 20–22 on the festival grounds at waterfront Aune-Osborn Park.

For $5, you get a wristband that offers admission throughout the affordable weekend of fun. And celebrations don't stop there. Special events run through the week and morph into the Rendezvous in the Sault, a living history event filled with historical re-enactors, musicians, entertainers, and merchants who will set up camps and displays with presentations and demonstrations on military and civilian life from 1668 to 1840.

Events kick off Friday with a 5 p.m. opening ceremony, kid-friendly events like a sandbox search for gold rocks (that can be traded for free ice cream) and story times, as well as more adult-focused fun like a beer tent and country line dancing. History is dialed into focus Saturday with a lumberjack display and chainsaw carving, colonial games, and a competition to build a floating freighter along with festival fun like corn-hole tournaments, a hot-dog-eating contest, kayak races, and a pulled pork BBQ competition. Sunday brings more fun contests, a 1600s-themed escape room, and live music. Native American culture will be on display throughout the weekend in booths and demonstrations, and there will also be a photo timeline of Sault St. Marie history, as well as the chance to have your picture taken in a vintage photo scene.

But stick around; the following Friday, the annual Rendezvous in the Sault begins, and re-enactors will be setting up camp through the week. Learn more: saultstemarie.com.