[MUSIC] [MUSIC] >> lake superior is one of the biggest lakes in the world.

but not many people know how many amazing stories that had us.

hey, i'm alexis.

i'm visiting the market maritime museum in michigan's upper peninsula to learn all about lake superior.

i know that the lake is gigantic, but i want to learn more about why it's important and why there's a whole museum about it.

and so far i've learned that even if you've never been to lake superior or even the upper peninsula, there's a good chance this lake has made a difference in your life.

let's head inside and i'll show you what i mean.

all right.

welcome to the market.

maritime museum.

maritime means that this museum is related to waterways, like oceans seas, or in this case, lake superior, they have a bunch of different exhibits here that you can learn all about the lake and its stories, including how lake superior has changed the lives of people all around the world, including yours.

first, it's worth taking a second to introduce you to the lake if you've never been here before.

this is a map of lake superior.

it's the biggest of the five great lakes and it touches four main areas.

the northern part of michigan's upper peninsula where we are now.

plus parts of wisconsin and minnesota along with the southern part of ontario, canada.

lake superior is also the deepest of the great lakes.

the deepest area is right around here.

and it's more than one thousand, three hundred feet deep picture, the tallest tree you've ever seen.

no matter how tall it is.

this part of the league is deeper than that.

and lake superior is so deep, partly because of glaciers glaciers are huge piles of it is they can be thousands of feet tall today, mainly find glaciers near the north and south poles.

but about fifteen thousand years ago, these piles of ice stretched all the way into this part of the united states and covered up michigan and glaciers can be heavy.

but think about how hard it is to pick up a big snowman in the winter.

and now imagine that snowman is as tall as a house with five hundred floors.

that's not exactly how heavy the glaciers were, but it gives you the right idea.

and when the super heavy glaciers moved across michigan all those years ago, that weight push down on the ground and scooped out big holes in the land.

then those holes later filled with water and became the great lakes, including lake superior.

here today, lake superior is an amazing place to play explores sailboats fish and more.

but check this out because the leak is so big it can turn into a dangerous place when a storm comes through.

the wind can create huge waves that make it unsafe for ships and the people on them.

most of the time the ship's make it to shore.

okay.

for example, the captains can look for late houses on the shore late.

this is send out beams of light.

we into the distance using lenses like this one and these flashing lights tell sailors where they are and help them avoid crashing into things like land or rocks hiding under the water.

but sometimes even light houses aren't enough.

shipwreck experts think that about five hundred, fifty ships have sunk on lake superior.

sometimes the ships are overwhelmed by the huge waves.

the waves crash over the ship and push them under water until they are flooded.

that might be what happened to the ship called the henry b smith, which sank in nineteen thirteen.

this is just a model for the record.

the real ship was much bigger.

in other cases, the weather can get so stormy or foggy that it's hard for ships to see where they're going and they crashed onto rocks or shallow areas.

and sometimes the ship sinks so fast that nobody knows what happened to them.

that's the story of a ship called the ss edmund fitzgerald, which sank in nineteen.

seventy-five the ship sank so quickly that none of the sailors were able to make it off the boat and tell anyone what happens because of this mystery.

the edmund fitzgerald is one of the most famous shipwrecks and all the great lakes and the market.

maritime museum has a whole exhibit about it.

for instance, this is a picture of the ship's captain, captain mcsorley.

and over here, you can see with the pieces of the ship look like today on the bottom of the lake.

on most days, though, lake superior is not a scary place at all.

a lot of people in this part of the upper peninsula spent a lot of their lives near the lake doing things like swimming playing on the beach and fishing.

the lake has even become part of their identities.

lake superior is special and living near the lake feels like part of who they are as people the same way that being a baseball player, an artist or student might be part of who you are.

as a person, though, i mentioned that lake superior has probably made a difference in your life even if you've never been here.

and here is why.

for years, lake superior has been used for shipping people, load boats with all kinds of supplies from around the upper peninsula.

and then those boats take those supplies across lake superior to other parts of michigan, to other cities on the great lakes and even to other states and countries.

and this has been happening for a long time, for instance, as far back as thousands of years ago, indigenous people in the western upper peninsula, doug small holes in the ground to mind the metal copper.

they turned that copper into things like bracelets and tools.

and then they traveled all around lake superior and its rivers and things like can use to train what they made with people all around north america.

then later on around the middle of the eighteen, hundreds, european settlers did the same thing.

but they took this to the next level.

instead of digging small holes.

they went deep underground to mind for metal.

they used hammers chisels and eventually big pieces of equipment to mine, copper and other metals like iron around this time.

people also chop down a lot of the big trees in the upper peninsula to get one for houses and other buildings.

then all these people took a lot of that metal and that would and loaded it into boats.

and they sailed those boats around the great lakes to sell their goods.

the wood from the upper peninsula was used to build houses and other buildings all around michigan and beyond.

maybe even some of the old buildings by where you live and the metal is used all around the country to make things like wires for electricity.

some of the people who made money selling these goods also played a big rules and their communities around the state.

instead of keeping all that money for themselves, they sometimes use some of it to help their cities, build things like schools and museums that are still around today.

these days, there's not a ton of mining still happening in the upper peninsula, but it's definitely not all over.

for example, people are still mining the metal iron your marquette.

so if you come to visit the marquette maritime museum, you might get to see a freighter stopping by the upper harbor just up the road, visiting town to pick up some iron and take it somewhere else.

these freighters can get up to about thousand feet long, which is almost as long as three football fields put end to end and they're the biggest boats on the great lakes.

i really love seeing them sail around.

all businesses like mining and logging have really helped the towns and cities in the upper peninsula grow.

and today there are about three hundred thousand people living here.

so you see, i like superior is so easy to get excited about.

it's beautiful and so fun to visit.

but it's also played a big part in the lives of millions of people without it.

cities like marquette probably wouldn't exist.

and after learning about all of this, i no understand why there's an entire maritime museum here in marquette.

there are enough stories to fill an entire building.

so thanks for joining me.

i'm glad you came.

>> this program was made possible by a grant from cta, the community telecommunications network,