|
Superior is a city in, and the county seat of, Douglas County in the state of Wisconsin.〔(【引用サイトリンク】accessdate=2011-06-07 )〕 The population was 27,244 at the 2010 census. Located at the junction of U.S. Highway 2 and U.S. Highway 53, it is immediately north of and adjacent to both the Village of Superior and the Town of Superior. Its neighborhoods include Billings Park, North End, South Superior, Central Park, East End, Allouez, and Itasca. Billings Park, South Superior, East End, and North End each have small business districts. Superior is at the western end of Lake Superior in northwestern Wisconsin. Bordered by Saint Louis, Superior, and Allouez bays, the city is framed by two rivers: the Nemadji and the Saint Louis. Superior and the neighboring city across the bay, Duluth, Minnesota, form a single metropolitan area called the Twin Ports. They share a harbor that is one of the most important ports on the Great Lakes. Both cities have museum ships (SS ''William A Irvin'' in Duluth and ' in Superior) devoted to the local maritime heritage. Superior was the last port of call for the ''Edmund Fitzgerald'' before its sinking in 1975. ==History== The first-known inhabitants of what is now Douglas County were Mound Builders. These people appeared on the shores of Lake Superior sometime after the latest glacier receded. They mined copper in the Minong Range and at Manitou Falls on the Black River. They pounded this metal into weapons, implements, and ornaments, some of which were later found buried as grave goods in mounds with their dead. Their civilization was eventually overrun by other tribes, mainly of Muskhogean and Iroquois stock, and they disappeared as a distinct culture in late prehistoric American times. About the time of the European arrival, the Duluth–Superior region transitioned from being predominately Dakota to being predominately Ojibwa/Chippewa (Anishinaabe), one of the many Algonquian language people. Under pressure from the Ojibwa, the Dakota moved west. In the Ojibwa oral history, Spirit Island in the Saint Louis River was their "Sixth Stopping Place," where the northern and southern divisions of the Ojibwa nation came together in their westward migration. The City of Superior in the Ojibwe language is called ''Gete-oodena'', meaning "Old Town." The Lake Superior Chippewa continued to migrate, with many settling to the east toward Madeline Island, the "Seventh Stopping Place." The Mississippi Chippewa migrated toward what is today Brainerd, Minnesota. (The two populations called both the settlements at Bayfield, Wisconsin and Brainerd as ''Oshki-oodena'' ("New Town") in the Ojibwe language). The first-known Europeans to visit the area were French. In 1618, Étienne Brûlé, a voyager for Samuel de Champlain, coasted along the south shore of Lake Superior where he met the Ojibwa. Upon returning to Quebec, he carried back some copper specimens and a glowing account of the region. In 1632, Champlain’s map was made of the area, showing “Lac Superior de Tracy” as Lake Superior and the lower end shore as “Fond du Lac.” Soon after, fur trading companies established posts, while Jesuit missionaries came to convert and learn from the Anishinaabe. For more than a century, the Hudson's Bay Company, followed by the North West Company in 1787 and later, John Jacob Astor's American Fur Company, maintained trading posts with the Anishinaabe, exchanging European tools and goods for their furs and processed leathers. Settlements developed around the trading posts. Many fur traders, the capitalized partners, married high-ranking Ojibwa women; both sides considered such marriages part of building alliances between the cultures. Fur trappers, who lived among the Ojibwa for months at a time and ranged throughout their territory, also married Ojibwa women. Their mixed-race children were called Métis by the French Canadians. Many of the men also entered the fur trade, becoming interpreters and guides as well. Douglas County was organized at the site of one of the major water highways used by early travelers and voyagers of inland America. This water trail, the Bois Brule–St. Croix River Portage Trail, was the most convenient connecting link between Lake Superior and the Mississippi River. The Bois Brule and St. Croix River systems were separated only by a short portage over the Eastern Continental Divide near Solon Springs, Wisconsin. The northward traveler used this water trail reach Lake Superior, while the downstream traveler could use it to go southwest to the Gulf of Mexico, unhindered by portages, by using the St. Croix and Mississippi rivers. This waterway was also an important route in the Wisconsin fur trade, particularly when the French War with the Fox Indians closed the more southern routes. In the nineteenth century, spurred by the prospect of lucrative shipping on the Great Lakes and exploitation of the iron ore industry, businessmen from Chicago and St. Paul, Minnesota laid claim to the site which became the city of Superior. They planned to lay out the plots of a great city, and attract new European-American settlers for development of the area. The first log cabin in Superior was erected in September 1853 on the banks of the Nemadji River, at the same time that ground was broken for construction of the locks and ship canal at Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan. This was intended to allow ships to bypass the rapids at that site. Superior was incorporated as a city on September 6, 1854.〔(Superior, WI – Official Website – History of Superior )〕 Around the same time Superior became the seat of newly formed Douglas County. Immediately there was eagerness for a railroad from Lake Superior to the Pacific Coast, and investment flowed in, but then the Panic of 1857 hit, investment slowed, and the population of the new city collapsed from 2500 to 500. Twenty-five years later the Northern Pacific Railway and other rail lines finally arrived, fulfilling the dream of a rail and water highway from coast to coast. In 1883 General John H. Hammond formed the Land and River Improvement Company, which developed much of West Superior, including the West Superior Iron and Steel plant. Numerous grain, coal and lumber businesses formed in the same period.〔 In the Boom Period from 1888 to 1892, Land and River Improvement and others built impressive architect-designed business blocks on Tower Avenue, seeing Superior as the "new Chicago." Many of the investors were from out East, so the buildings received names like the New Jersey Block and the Maryland Block.〔 By 1892, population was 34,000. Then the Panic of 1893 hit, and development slowed again.〔 Between 1890 and 1920, the city was heavily settled by migrants from the eastern United States as well as immigrants from over 15 countries, including England, Scotland, Ireland, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Belgium, Germany, Austria, Hungary, and Croatia. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Superior, Wisconsin」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|