United States
Sault Ste. Marie—"the Soo" to the locals who have been simplifying its French name for over three centuries—sits at the rapids of the St. Marys River, the only natural waterway connecting Lake Superior to the lower Great Lakes. This eighteen-foot drop between Superior and Huron was a gathering place for the Ojibwe people long before Europeans arrived, and it was here that Father Jacques Marquette established a Jesuit mission in 1668, making the Soo one of the oldest European settlements in the American interior. The city's defining feature is the Soo Locks—an engineering marvel that lifts and lowers the massive Great Lakes freighters through the elevation change, handling more tonnage annually than the Panama and Suez canals combined.
The city stretches along the river's south bank, its downtown oriented toward the water and the spectacle of the locks. The Soo Locks Park, operated by the Army Corps of Engineers, provides free viewing platforms from which visitors can watch 1,000-foot freighters—carrying iron ore, grain, coal, and limestone—pass through the locks in a slow-motion ballet of hydraulic engineering. The process takes about forty-five minutes per vessel, and the proximity is startling—the ships pass within arm's reach of the viewing platform, their steel hulls towering above the observers. The Museum Ship Valley Camp, a retired freighter moored at the riverfront, offers an immersive tour of a Great Lakes cargo vessel, including a sobering exhibit on the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald in 1975.
The cuisine of the Soo reflects its Upper Peninsula heritage—a blend of Finnish, Cornish, and French-Canadian traditions shaped by the logging, mining, and fishing industries that built the region. The pasty—a handheld meat pie of Cornish origin, adopted by Finnish and Italian miners as portable lunch—is the UP's signature food, and the Soo's pasty shops serve versions stuffed with beef, rutabaga, potato, and onion that are hearty, satisfying, and uniquely Upper Peninsular. Fresh whitefish from Lake Superior, smoked or fried, is the region's finest seafood. The local craft brewery scene, while modest, produces ales that honor the logging and shipping heritage—Soo Brewing Company's taproom provides a convivial gathering place downtown.
The surrounding region offers experiences that range from industrial spectacle to wilderness adventure. The Tower of History, a 210-foot observation tower, provides panoramic views of the locks, the river, and the Canadian city of Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, across the border (connected by the International Bridge). Point Iroquois Lighthouse, on the shore of Lake Superior west of the city, offers tours and a beach of unusual beauty. Tahquamenon Falls State Park, fifty miles west, features the Upper Falls—one of the largest waterfalls east of the Mississippi, its amber-tinted water (colored by tannins from cedar swamps upstream) plunging nearly fifty feet in a curtain two hundred feet wide. Whitefish Point, on the Lake Superior shore, houses the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum, where the bell of the Edmund Fitzgerald is displayed.
Sault Ste. Marie is accessible as a Great Lakes cruise port, with ships passing through the locks as part of the navigation. The best time to visit is June through September, when the shipping season is at its busiest and the northern Michigan climate is at its most hospitable. The fall color season (late September–October) is spectacular in the surrounding forests. Winter brings a different beauty—ice formations on the rapids, aurora borealis visible on clear nights, and the dramatic sight of ice-breaking operations keeping the shipping channel open.