Two Lake Michigan ferries tied up at the Kewaunee harbor slips.
The eastern terminus of the Green Bay Route was the Lake Michigan port city of Kewaunee. The railroad had a yard with two ferry slips, located on a peninsula jutting into the harbor. Ferries from the Ann Arbor and Pere Marquette (later Chesapeake & Ohio) connected with the Green Bay Route at Kewaunee. Typically one boat from each line in the daytime and another from each at night called on the KGB&W in Kewaunee.
The ship in the near slip (slip no. 1) is ANN ARBOR NO. 7. Built in 1925, ANN ARBOR NO. 7 was modernized in 1965 and renamed VIKING. I only took one cross-lake trip on a carferry, and it was on this ship in the mid 1970s. Pere MArquette No. 21. is in slip no. 2. These two ships were among six nearly identical carferries working the Lake Michigan routes, the others being Pere Marquette No. 22, and Grand Trunk Railroad's Grand Rapids, Madison, and City of Milwaukee.
This postcard view was postmarked 1947, and really captures how east end carferry operations used to be: hard-working ships not afraid to belch a load of coal smoke into the prevailing western winds. Thanks to everyone who helped identify these ships - Shawn Burgess-Keith, Robert Bessey, Mike Modderman, Tom Read, and Erik Jonasson.
Postcard, 1947.
