The Escanaba & Lake Superior Railroad is a Class III shortline railroad that operates of track in Northeastern Wisconsin and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Its main line runs from Rockland, Michigan, to Green Bay, Wisconsin, and it also owns various branch lines and out-of-service track. In 1897, the Escanaba River Company built a railroad from Wells, Michigan, to tap a large hardwood timber stand at LaFave’s Hill. In 1898, the company name was changed to the Escanaba & Lake Superior Railway (E&LS).
History Founding to 1978 Isaac Stephenson, Jefferson Sinclair, Daniel Wells Jr., Harrison Ludington, and Nelson Ludington were the founders of the N. Ludington Company. It was again renamed to the I. Stephenson company when Isaac Stephenson became majority owner in the same year. The N. Ludington Company became part of this company, and along with being rebranded as the Escanaba River Company, became a subsidiary of this new company in 1888. The Escanaba River Co. constructed to connect the company to hardwood reserves west of Wells and Escanaba. Work began in 1898 to extend the track from Wells northwest to Watson, Michigan and was completed in 1899.
A branch line referred to Ford River was constructed in 1899 from Watson for a distance of . This branch was abandoned in 1910. In 1902, the E&LS built of track southeast out of Wells into the center of Escanaba.
From 1900 to 1903, the railroad extended the mainline track to Channing. This established a connection with the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad (component of the Milwaukee Road).
On February 12, 1900 the E&LS signed a trackage rights agreement with the Milwaukee Road which allowed them to reach their own ore docks built north of Escanaba. As part of this trackage rights agreement with the Milwaukee Road, the E&LS Railway was reincorporated as the Escanaba and Lake Superior Railroad on February 12, 1900; it has used this name ever since. This agreement was ended March 15, 1937.
At this point in the railroad's history, it had connections to both major Class 1 railroads that existed at the time in the UP (the Chicago and North Western and the Milwaukee Road) and was able to diversify its traffic base. This diversification included the Milwaukee Road ore trains From the Groveland mine and the Iron River mines, bound for the Milwaukee ore docks in Escanaba. The railroad also chartered a mixed passenger train that ran along the existing route up until the late 1950s. This service included run-through mail and express from the Milwaukee Road, and passengers bound north from the Chicago & North Western.
Starting in 1901 and continuing into 1902, a branch line was constructed from Northland for to the Escanaba River. Between 1902 and 1903, the Northland line was extended from the Escanaba River to Kates, a distance of . The northernmost portion of this branch that extended from Gleason, Michigan was abandoned June 7, 1922. This branch was abandoned in 1939..
Other branch lines were built by the E&LS to get out the remote timber stands: Ralph, Turner (1911–1912), Mashek, Michigan, and Hendricks, Michigan (1915). These branches totaled more than of combined branch trackage and sidings. The railroad peaked at of mainline and of yard and sidings on June 30, 1918.
By 1935 the Milwaukee’s docks at Escanaba had deteriorated to the point a large expense was needed to repair them. On March 15, 1937, the Milwaukee Road ended its trackage rights of its ore trains off the E&LS and entered into an agreement with the Chicago & North Western (C&NW) to jointly operate what was known as the Menominee Ore Pool Agreement trains into Escanaba. Though the E&LS petitioned the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) and later the U.S. Supreme Court to be allowed to join the joint operations, it was blocked from doing so in 1938 by the US District Court of Appeals.
In the 1940s, two major sources of traffic were developed near Escanaba: The Harnischfeger Corporation, which built large cranes for mining operations, and the Escanaba Paper Company.. The railroad's transportation of logs to Wells ended in 1943 with the closure of the Stephenson mill. In the early 1960s, the E&LS was purchased by the Hanna Mining Company.
In 1969, the E&LS stopped serving the Escanaba Paper Company during a strike (July 1, 1969) at the mill; in response, the mill's owners built a new connection to the C&NW and Soo Line and cut car movements on the E&LS more than five-fold in two years, from 2,200 carloads in 1968 to 449 in 1970. The E&LS continued skeleton service during the 1970s. In 1978, Hanna requested permission from the ICC to abandon the railroad.
1978 to 2005 On October 6, 1978, Hanna Mining Company sold the E&LS Railroad to John Charles Larkin and his father Wade W. Larkin, businessmen from Minneapolis who had organized a National Railway Historical Society passenger excursion on the railroad earlier in the decade.. He planned to return the railroad to profitability by reducing labor costs and entering the business of leasing boxcars to other railroads. Shortly thereafter, the boxcar leasing market collapsed. Additionally, with the Milwaukee Road going bankrupt in 1977, it planned to abandon its trackage in Michigan, consisting largely of a route between Ontonagon and Green Bay, Wisconsin.. This plan would break the E&LS's connections at Channing, as well as end rail service to the shippers on the Milwaukee Road lines. One of these shippers, Champion Paper, which operated a mill in Ontonagon, approached the E&LS with a proposal for the railroad to buy the Milwaukee Road track to Ontonagon.
Purchasing ex-Milwaukee Road, C&NW, and Soo Line trackage These recent branch line acquisitions are used by the E&LS to store rolling stock for third parties.
The E&LS was able to reach an agreement with Milwaukee Road's bankruptcy court to take control of the Ontonagon route, as well as additional trackage south. They were backed by many of the line's shippers and the states of Michigan and Wisconsin, but opposed by the C&NW, which wanted to retain iron ore transport from the Groveland Mine in Randville, Michigan, and Hanna Mining, the former owner of the E&LS and owner of the Groveland Mine. The C&NW and Milwaukee Road had previously shared service to the Groveland Mine under a decades-long agreement between the two, called the Menominee Range Iron Ore Pool. By 1979, the mine impacted 31,000 of the 50,000 cars moved over the Milwaukee Road's tracks in the area, a level of traffic so high that Larkin publicly stated that the E&LS would not make a profit without it. The ICC, and a US court, ruled in E&LS' favor.
On March 10, 1980, the E&LS formally bought the ex-Milwaukee Road between Ontonagon through Channing south to Iron Mountain. It also obtained a lease-to-own agreement of the tracks south from Iron Mountain to Green Bay; this section was purchased in 1982. Upon purchase, the E&LS immediately began rebuilding its new trackage, which had been neglected by the Milwaukee Road in the years leading up to its bankruptcy. Major funding came from the state of Michigan, which paid $1.6 million (equivalent to $ in ) to install new ties on the track to Ontonagon.
In April 1983 the E&LS RR and the Northeast Wisconsin Railroad Commission signed an agreement to rehabilitate of track between Green Bay and Crivitz. This agreement called for $2.27 million in federal and local funds. The Federal Railroad Administration share was $1,231,873 with the E&LS contributing $1.25 million (45%). This project's target was to improve this segment of track's conditions to meet FRA Class 2 standards (25 mph).
In November 1981, the E&LS bought additional trackage, this time a branch line from Channing north to Republic. In 1985, it bought a branch from Crivitz, Wisconsin, on the Green Bay line, east to Marinette, Wisconsin, and Menominee, Michigan. During 1987 and 1988, the line to Ontonagon had its lightweight rails replaced with new, heavier rails.
In 1986, the E&LS connection track to the C&NW RR was built from a switch just south of Lineville Road in Howard, Wisconsin, to the C&NW Railroad's Howard Industrial Park siding line. This ultimately allowed the E&LS to discontinue operations south of Bond Street in Green Bay in 1993. This connection was the result of a construction agreement between the E&LS and the C&NW that was executed on November 27, 1985, which provided joint access to the Howard Industrial Park. Two of the contracts executed then allowed tenants of Howard Industrial Park a choice of competing railroads for shipping service. This also allowed the E&LS to eliminate the unproductive end of their main line east of Bond Street c. 1999, then stubbed it off in September 2007, and finally the track was removed from Bond Street to the Oakland Avenue Intermodal Yard in Green Bay.
On June 24, 1991, E&LS bought a ex-Soo Line (ex-Duluth, South Shore & Atlantic) branch line from Sidnaw, on the Ontonagon line, east to Nestoria.
The following year (1992), the E&LS mainline was taken out of service, currently a segment from Chandler, Mi. to Ralph, Mi. is OOS. Access to Escanaba was retained via a new trackage rights agreement with the Wisconsin Central Railroad (now Canadian National Railroad), under which the E&LS was granted access their main line from Pembine, Wisconsin, to North Escanaba.
Oconto Falls branch On April 20, 1995, the Escanaba and Lake Superior Railroad bought the 4.7 mile branch line between Stiles Junction, Wisconsin, just north of Green Bay, to Oconto Falls, Wisconsin from the C&NW. The Union Pacific (ex C&NW) line east of Stiles Junction, Wisconsin, to Oconto, Wisconsin, was abandoned on December 3, 1996..
Post-2005 and track closures In 2005, the Wisconsin Department of Transportation provided a $2.01 million (equivalent to $ in ) grant to rebuild E&LS trackage from Crivitz north to the Michigan state line. This was the last section of mainline track that had not seen a complete rebuild since it was bought in 1980.
After the closure of the Smurfit-Stone Paper Mill in Ontonagon in 2009, the Escanaba and Lake Superior abandoned of track between Ontonagon and milepost 395 one mile east of Rockland in 2011, severing the railroad's closest trackage to Lake Superior. The remaining track between Rockland and Mass City is used for third-party long term car storage. The sidings between Escanaba & Channing are used for long term car storage. The E&LS and the Michigan Department of Natural Resources consummated a rail banking/interim trail use agreement on or about October 28, 2014, for the abandoned portion of the E&LS rail line between milepost 395 at Rockland and Ontonagon. The abandoned segment is now the Ontonagon to Rockland Trail.
The northernmost customer ships logs from an open air transload in the yard near the junction of East Branch Road and Depot Road in Mass City.
LP Building Solutions - Sagola In 2021 LP Building Solutions (LP) announce it would convert their Sagola, Mi plant from the manufacturing of OSB to SmartSide siding. This will allow the Sagola plant to produce around 330 million square ft of SmartSide siding per year. The project is additionally supported by a $325,000 Michigan Business Development Program performance-based grant. LP has invested $194 million in Sagola. This is one of the largest projects ever supported by the MSF in the Upper Peninsula. LP Building Solutions in Dickinson County, has operated in Sagola since 1988. The first production of SmartSide at Sagola was on March 15, 2023.
Track Removal In August-September of 2026, Tracks were removed from Rockland, MI to Sidnaw, MI, starting near milepost 365 west of Sidnaw, MI. 29.9 miles of track will be going to extending the Ontonagon to Rockland Trail as well as Channing to Wells, for a total of 63.5 miles of track. As of right now the future of this rail bed is unclear, it is unknown if the E&LS still owns it.
Rolling stock