fishermen in the St. Marys Rapids, 1901 in downtown Sault Ste. Marie
Pre-colonial period Prior to the arrival of Europeans in the 1620s, the area that is now Sault Ste. Marie was shared by the
Ojibwe,
Odawa and
Potawatomi whose
Algonkian ancestors had come from the east around 1200. The rapids created an impediment to travel and an obvious stopping point for voyages west to Lake Superior or east to Lake Huron. In addition, the location offered a strong strategic position to observe movement along the river. The Indigenous people drew on the ample resources of the area including wild game and berries, materials to build shelters, and most importantly
sturgeon in the spring and abundant
whitefish in the fall. The
Ojibwe called this area , meaning "place of the rapids" and maintained a permanent settlement of about 150 to 200 people. Baawitigong was also an important meeting place for the broader family of Algonquin peoples and would grow to thousands during the whitefish season each year.
Arrival of the French The very first European recorded to have seen the rapids was
French explorer
Étienne Brûlé, whose 1621 voyage to the mouth of Lake Superior took him, together with his
Huron guides, along the north channel of Lake Huron. The French named this area of rapids
Sault de Gaston in honour of
Gaston, Duke of Orléans, the brother of King
Louis XIII. This is the name that appears on
Samuel de Champlain's 1632 map of
New France based on descriptions from Brûlé and others. In 1668, French
Jesuit missionaries renamed the area
Sault Sainte-Marie, and established a mission settlement on the river's south bank, making
Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan one of the
oldest French settlements in North America. Based on his voyages with the Jesuits the year before, explorer
Louis Jolliet marked the area
"Le Sault St. Marie" on his 1674 map.
Exploration and the fur trade Sault Ste. Marie formed a key crossroads of the
fur trade route, which stretched from the north country above
Lake Superior through the St. Marys River and on to
Montreal and European markets. The French used the area as a juncture to search for other riches as well. In 1736, French naval officer Louis Denys de la Ronde established a shipyard on the north shore of the St. Mary's near Pointe-aux-Pins. Inspired by reports of precious metals, from here the first decked vessel was constructed and launched onto Lake Superior to mine its shores for copper. From this same spot, American-born explorer
Alexander Henry built a 40 ton sloop and barge to explore the Superior for mineral riches. At the conclusion of the
Seven Years' War in 1763, France relinquished virtually all of its interests in North America and the British and their
First Nations allies controlled the fur trade on the
Great Lakes. Around 1790 the
North West Company established a
fur trading post at the village. A cosmopolitan, mixed population of Europeans, First Nations peoples, and
Métis grew up around the it on both sides of the river. Traders regularly interacted with tribes from around the Great Lakes. Scots-British fur trader
John Johnston, his Ojibwe wife,
Ozhaguscodaywayquay (Woman of the Green Glade), daughter of a chief, and their multi-racial children were prominent here in the village in the late 1700s. They frequently hosted travellers from both the US and Canada. The children were taught English, Ojibwe and French. Their daughter Jane Johnston married
Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, a US Indian agent and early ethnographer, and they had children.
Jane Johnston Schoolcraft has been recognized as the first Native American poet and writer in the United States.
War of 1812 and aftermath This fluid environment changed during and after the
War of 1812 between Britain and the United States. Trade dropped during the war and on July 20, 1814, an American force destroyed the
North West Company depot on the north shore of the St. Marys River. Since the Americans were unable to capture
Fort Mackinac, the British forces retained control of Sault Ste. Marie. As noted, after the war and defining a new border, the US closed its territory to British Canadian traders, shutting off much interaction. , July 30, 1890 In 1870, the United States refused to give the steamer
Chicora, carrying Colonel
Garnet Wolseley, permission to pass through the locks at Sault Ste Marie, which were otherwise available to both US and Canadian ships. They had built the first locks in 1855. In order to control their own water passage, the Canadians constructed the
Sault Ste. Marie Canal, which was completed in 1895.
Canadian Pacific Railway Although Sault Ste. Marie had been a planned destination for railway expansion since the early 1880s, there was considerable disagreement within the business consortium assembled to build the
Canadian Pacific Railway as to whether or not to route its
transcontinental line through it. The symbolic "first spike" of the railway had been driven at
Bonfield, Ontario in
Nipissing District in 1881, and construction had been proceeding westward. The American railway magnate
James J. Hill, nicknamed the "Empire Builder", supported a route through Sault Ste. Marie, which would allow for both a "water bridge" to the head of Lake Superior at
Thunder Bay and an all-rail connection to the west via American railways in the
Midwest, benefiting Hill's
St Paul, Minneapolis and Manitoba Railroad. Simultaneously, there were political considerations around the railway as a nation-building project coupled with fears of American expansionism. During the
Red River Rebellion, the
Wolseley expedition had left Toronto in May 1870 and only arrived at
Fort Garry, Manitoba by August. American control of the Sault Ste. Marie locks was seen to be a continued potential impediment to future military transportation within Canada. An all-Canadian rail route would bypass this. A CPR line was surveyed and gradually constructed along the north shore of Lake Huron, cutting through the
La Cloche Mountains, while the
Central Ontario-based
Midland Railway of Canada also surveyed its own line, but became insolvent and collapsed shortly after. The
Northern Railway of Canada, which had pushed northward from Toronto to
Lake Simcoe, sought to push further to
North Bay and then cut west under a subsidiary called the
Northern, North-Western, and Sault Ste. Marie Railway, competing directly with the CPR. It also collapsed and ultimately the line terminated at a junction with the CPR line south of North Bay, named Nipissing Junction. Throughout the abrupt rise and fall of these competing projects, CPR construction had slowly marched westward under engineer James Worthington. By 1884, however, changes had occurred in CPR management with the rise of
William Cornelius Van Horne, who would later become the company's president. Both Hill and Worthington resigned from the company, and Hill became a bitter opponent of it. A new transcontinental mainline through Northern Ontario, passing directly through the interior and bypassing the lakeshore settlements along Lake Huron (including Sault Ste. Marie), was laid out and constructed from a point on the line which became known as Sudbury Junction. This junction point became a small CPR town, and with the discovery of vast mineral resources in the
Sudbury Basin during the construction of this transcontinental line north of the junction, mining activity in the Sudbury area grew explosively, leading to the creation of
Sudbury District in 1894 and shifting economic focus away from Sault Ste. Marie. The original CPR line (by then known as the CPR Algoma Branch), which had lain dormant until 1888, was finally reactivated and completed through to Sault Ste. Marie, joining with the
St Paul, Minneapolis and Manitoba Railroad via the joint
Sault Ste. Marie International Railroad Bridge. Its economy stagnated toward the end of the 19th century with the decline of the fur trade. With a population of almost 880, Sault Ste. Marie was incorporated as a village on July 29, 1871. It became a township on April 23, 1887. The town gained brief international notoriety in 1911 in the trial of
Angelina Napolitano, the first person in Canada to use the
battered woman defence for murder.
Becoming a city Twenty-five years after becoming a town, the provincial government granted Sault Ste. Marie a city charter. The
Act to incorporate the City of Sault Ste. Marie left boundaries, by-laws, regulations, contracts, and employees as they had been under the township and allowed the former town council to carry on as the first city council until elections could be held in the new year. It also created a mechanism for the amalgamation of the Moffly subdivision from the neighbouring Steelton township into the city which occurred later that year. Following a plebiscite of its residents in 1917, Steelton and its 7,000 residents amalgamated with the city on January 1, 1918 bringing the city's population to 18,000. During
World War II, and particularly after the US was attacked by Japan at
Pearl Harbor in 1941, government concern turned to protection of the locks and shipping channel at Sault Ste. Marie. A substantial military presence was established to protect the locks from a possible attack by
Nazi German aircraft from the north. The recent development of long-range bombers increased fears of a sudden air raid. Military strategists studied polar projection maps, which indicated that the air distance from occupied
Norway to the town was about the same as the distance from Norway to New York. That direct route of about is over terrain where there were few observers and the long winter nights could hide activity. A joint Canadian and US committee called the "Permanent Joint Board on Defence" drove the installation of anti-aircraft defence and associated units of the
United States Army Air Forces and
Royal Canadian Air Force to defend the locks. An anti-aircraft training facility was established north of Sault Ste. Marie on the shores of Lake Superior.
Barrage balloons were installed, and early warning radar bases were established at five locations in northern Ontario (
Kapuskasing,
Cochrane,
Hearst,
Armstrong (Thunder Bay District), and
Nakina) to watch for incoming aircraft. Military personnel were established to guard sensitive parts of the transportation infrastructure. A little over one year later, in January 1943, most of these facilities and defences were deemed excessive and removed, save a reduced military base at Sault Ste. Marie. The first
Algerine-class minesweeper in the
Royal Canadian Navy was named
HMCS Sault Ste. Marie (J334) after the city. It was laid down in 1942 and acted as a convoy escort in the
Battle of the Atlantic. On January 29, 1990, under mayor
Joe Fratesi, Sault Ste. Marie became a flashpoint in the
Meech Lake Accord constitutional debate when council passed a
resolution declaring English as the city's official language and the sole language for provision of municipal services. The resolution was widely seen as retaliation for Quebec Premier
Robert Bourassa's move to
override the Supreme Court of Canada ruling that declared parts of
Bill 101 unconstitutional. Bill 101 had declared French as the only official language of Quebec. Numerous other Ontario municipalities had already passed similar protest resolutions, but Sault Ste. Marie was the largest to have passed such a resolution. It was the first to do so despite its sizable
Franco-Ontarian population. Many political figures, including
Brian Mulroney,
Jean Chrétien and Ontario premier
David Peterson, who had strongly condemned Premier Bourassa's use of the 'notwithstanding clause', also expressed their opposition to the Sault Ste. Marie resolution. Peterson and his successor as premier,
Bob Rae, refused to meet with Mayor Fratesi on several subsequent occasions, even to discuss unrelated matters. The city had previously established French as an official language for government services, due to a sizable French-speaking population, and these residents objected strongly to the council's action. The resolution was struck down by a court ruling in 1994, one year after Premier Bourassa passed
Bill 86, which amended that province's language laws in accordance with the Supreme Court ruling. ==Climate==