Take Me to the River: Making the Most of a Natural Resource

The Menominee River from the Sixth Street Landing, Marinette.

If you haven't driven across the Ogden Street or Menekaunee Bridge lately, then you haven't seen the latest additions to the Menekaunee Harbor Restoration Project, in the works for several years now.

Read more about it here. And here. The project has made some stunning upgrades. Both sides of the river can take pride in the effort.

The beautiful upgraded harbor will play a key role in the upcoming Cabela National Walleye Championships.

The harbor project is one of many recent efforts to made the Menominee River cleaner, more accessible, and user-friendly.

A few years back, Marinette's Sixth Street Boat Landing got a similar upgrade.

An inlet at Sixth Street Landing, 2015.

For many years the lower Menominee River has been the focus of a Remedial Action Plan (RAP) to clean up of Areas of Concern (AOC) caused by careless industrial practices and lack of environmental awareness of decades past. Read more here.

There was once talk of building a fish ladder at North American Hydro's Menominee dam north of the Hattie Street Bridge. I searched online, but couldn't find much on that project's progress. I thought it was a done deal.

Then there was an 2014 or 2015 announcement from the US Army Corps of Engineers that several islands in the river would be restored to their native habitats. Does anyone know the status of that project? I've never seen any work on the islands.

For the past 20 years, there has been much conversation about making the river accessible to area residents and visitors.

Low water near Stephenson Island, September 2012.

The Menominee River is what made us. It made our area attractive for early settlers, the native tribes who fished its waters and settled its first villages. It made us a center for the lumber trade in the latter part of the 19th century and lured men seeking work and later, their families here to - over time - build the community we know today

The river both unites and divides. It runs through our communities and perhaps through our veins. Yet some only see its money-making potential.

We live in strange and often unsettling times.