Silver Creek Cliff: The Tunnel Through Minnesota's North Shore | Lake Superior History

Some places make you stop before you have taken a single step. Silver Creek Cliff rises straight out of Lake Superior on Minnesota's North Shore, a dark wall of billion-year-old basalt with the largest freshwater lake on Earth stretching to a flat blue horizon below. This is the story of the stubborn rock, the dangerous old highway carved into its face, and the tunnel that was finally blasted straight through it.

We walk the paved wayside above Lake Superior near Two Harbors, in Lake County, Minnesota, and trace the whole arc: the Midcontinent Rift that poured out these lava flows 1.1 billion years ago, the Anishinaabe homeland on the shore of Gichigami, the cliff-hugging road of 1924, the seventy dangerous years of rockfall, and the 1,344-foot Silver Creek Cliff Tunnel bored through the headland from 1991 to 1994. The old ledge lives on today as the Gitchi Gami State Trail.

CHAPTERS
0:00 The Cliff Above the Great Lake
0:59 Where Are We
1:58 Gichigami, the Great Lake
3:01 Born of Fire: 1.1 Billion Years Ago
4:10 The Hard Rock
5:12 First Peoples: the Anishinaabe Homeland
6:15 The Old Road of 1924
7:19 The Dangerous Years
8:24 The Decision: Boring the Tunnel
9:24 A Million Cubic Yards
10:21 Two Tunnels on Highway 61
11:18 The Road Reborn: the Gitchi Gami Trail
12:20 Iron Country
13:22 The North Shore Scenic Drive
14:26 The Overlook
15:29 Closing Thoughts

ABOUT THIS PLACE
Silver Creek Cliff sits on Minnesota Highway 61 just north of Two Harbors, on the North Shore of Lake Superior. The original road was carved into the cliff face about 125 feet above the lake in 1923 to 1924 and used for roughly seventy years, exposed to rockfall the whole time. Between 1991 and 1994, crews bored the 1,344-foot Silver Creek Cliff Tunnel through the headland, removing close to a million cubic yards of rock. It is one of only two highway tunnels in Minnesota, both on Highway 61. The abandoned cliff grade was reborn as part of the Gitchi Gami State Trail. The cliffs themselves are basalt from the North Shore Volcanic Group, erupted during the Midcontinent Rift about 1.1 billion years ago. Two Harbors shipped Minnesota's first load of iron ore in 1884.

Music: licensed under Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY).

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