The Nome daily nugget., 1936-01-24

Prepared by National Geographic Society.
 Washington. D. C.-WNU Service. H Y CAR or by steamer, trip H around the Great Lakes is tour of American commerce
 and industry. If they only lay there, basking in the sun or raging with storms, our inland seas would be i'm. pressive. But they have served Amer ica as no inland sea has served anoth- CT land. At every corner of the Great Lakes, and because of them, busy cities have risen. On the banks of hun cred tiny creeks commerce has planted its loading piers or elevators.
 Our bridges crossed our lakes as ore before they crossed river. Scarcely q skyscraper whose framework has not widowed in the swell of our Big Sea Water" before combing our urban skies The story of our Great Lakes is one of unbelieyably cheap freight rates, of maryelously active freighters, of fur and lumber, iron and grain.
 In the days when the principal crop of America was cold bred fur, the St. Lawrence was the gateway to our Mid west. Fur was the incentive of Nico- let, Joliet, Marquette and La Sale, to whom the watershed between the Great Lakes and the wide Mississippi basin was familiar while the British were still settling the seacoast.
 Around the lakes, fur ceded its pri- mary place to grain or lumber. Hi awatha's forest primeval" crashed be- fore Paul Bunyan's saw and ax.
 Then came iron!
 At the northern end of the lakes whole rust-red mountains of ore stood ready for the steam shovels Coal moved north and iron south, combi- nation providing profitable return car goes. Wherever creek reached the south shore of Lake Erie, coal and ore were tossed back and forth by car tip pie and "clamshell."
 Buffalo a Busy Port.
 Buffalo is busy gateway to the Great Lakes region. Protected from early traffic competition by the Niagara falls, which were later to furnish its light and power, this rich inland port stands at the east end of the upper lakes and the west end of the only Had an Indian interpreter not made a mistake, 1t would have been called Beaver" startling but suitable name for this busy creek side port.
 A dozen railways now obscure the fact that Buffalo is not a creature of the plains but an aquatic city, founded on the creek that still sustains 1t. It's real greatness began on October 26, 1925, when the Seneca Chief started down the 4-footdeep Erie canal.
 On June %, 1883, at Chicago, salt water from the Gulf of Mexico was blended with Lake Michigan water when a fotilla of Mississippi river barges, bearing spices, coffee, and su- gar, arrived at Lake Michigan.
 The 9-foot channel does today what river and glacier did more than once in the past-links the Great Lakes with the Gulf. It took 2G0 years for h. liet's dream of Lakes-toGulf water way to come true.
 cIeveland's Cuyahoga Flats.
 Like Buffalo. Cleveland owed it's early greatness to q creek. Chic sec retaries, high up in the 700-foot tower of Cleveland Union station, look down in spirit as in truth on Cuyahoga "Flats."
 From tower owned by railways they can easily identify the site of a canal bed buried under railroad right of way. In the most striking unit of Cleveland's ambitious "Clty Within a City" they survey the ugly valley which interrupts the plateau along which the spacious city sprawls.
 The Cuyahoga is but one of many crooked, slow. slimy, smelly little riv- CTS, iridescent with oil, edged with rust, and crossed by dull black bridges, which obsequiously enter the Great Lakes.
 Theoretically, the best place to study lake shipping would be from a viewing stand off Alpena, with most of the 2,5OO Great Lakes vessels aggregating 3,OO0,- GOO tons capacity, weaving a fabric of traffic up and down the lakes.
 What city has influenced modern