Shipwrecks visible on Lake Michigan's shoreline

Megha Satyanarayana, Detroit Free Press | USATODAY

DETROIT -- Visitors to the Grand Haven, Mich., area may see something odd peeking back at them from the water — shipwrecks now more visible because lake and river levels have fallen to historic lows.

"You can just walk out among them," said Craig Rich of the Michigan Shipwreck Research Association in Holland, Mich. "They are actually sticking out of the water."

Rich said that since January, the association has found five ships and boats previously under several feet of water in the Grand Haven area. Grand Haven is about 24 miles west of Grand Rapids, Mich., and nearly 100 miles west of the Michigan capital, Lansing. They are among hundreds, or maybe thousands, of cargo boats lost to Lake Michigan since shipping began in the Great Lakes.

It's a rare occurrence, Grand Haven harbormaster Jeff Hawke said, and for the time being, the ships that have surfaced will stay put, since they don't pose a hazard to navigation. He said his team started seeing old ships at the end of 2012, about the time water levels hit record lows in the Lake Michigan-Huron system.

Two of the ships have storied histories, Rich said, including a former life on the Detroit River.

Just off the north edge of Harbor Island in Grand Haven sits the remains of the Aurora, built in 1887 in Cleveland. Rich said the boat was 300 feet long — nearly the size of a football field — and about 40 feet wide. Before finding its way to Grand Haven, the Aurora traveled the Detroit River, where, in 1898, it burned to the water line. After being rebuilt, Rich said, the boat carried salt.

In 1927, the boat was towed into the Grand Haven harbor, and in 1932, it burned again. Shipwreck hunters now will see that part of the boat that was underwater while the top burned, Rich said.

Unlike boats lost to the deeper waters of the lake, boats that may be surfacing along the shoreline were burned by their owners or cut down to barges when their usefulness had waned, said Cari Woday of the Tri-Cities Historical Museum in Grand Haven. She said she has been to the site of the Aurora, and when she first saw it, she wasn't quite sure what it was.

"There are these big crosses of steel," she said, describing what Rich said was part of the hull sticking out of the water. "They almost look like massive nails."

Just to the west of the Aurora, closer to the city's power plant, is the L.L. Barth, another freighter, built in 1889 in Bay City, Mich., where Rich said it was used to move coal around the Great Lakes. First called the Wilhelm, the L.L. Barth was used in 1916 to haul sand and gravel from Lake Michigan to Chicago, where the material was used to create that city's famous Lake Shore Drive.

Visitors can see the boats from shore, Hawke said, and Rich said they are fairly easy to paddle or boat around.

The exposure from low water levels will offer a new viewing experience for visitors.

"If they are going by on boats, what they are going to see is a whole lot more than before," Rich said.