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People crowding the beaches of Goderich drive right by the soaring towers of the harbour's grain terminal and salt mine but never know what goes on behind the scenes. Out of sight, the hectic activity takes place that makes Goderich the busiest port on Lake Huron. Goderich Elevators Limited becomes a beehive of activity from late July through autumn as the harvest season begins on Huron County farms. From the winter wheat harvest through the corn harvest, trucks line up to deliver the bounty of the county to the elevator for shipment on freighters from around the world. Though the five receiving pits at the elevator can handle as much as 6,000 tonnes a day, visitors to the harbour in peak seasons will find lineups of trucks that fill the parking lots, the nearby street and even part-way down the harbour hill. The trucks enter one building (that gold-coloured building near the old railway station) where samples of their grain are taken for moisture content and quality of the grain, then the trucks are weighed and sent to dump their load in a pit at one of the two elevator complexes. A system of conveyors whisks the grain up to various bins located throughout the huge elevator complex where it is stored until there is time available to clean it. When the cleaner is ready, the grain is retrieved from the bin, run through the cleaning process, then taken back to another bin for storage. High atop the cement silos of the western-most terminal, huge conveyor belts help speed the grain from one part of the complex to another, dumping the grain into the bins, like giant cells in a honeycomb, which stretch all the way up from the ground. The conveyor belts, powered by mammoth electric motors, also help load the ships. In a typical year the Goderich port will handle 44,000 metric tonnes of grain: some feedgrain or milling-quality durum wheat coming in; some wheat and corn outbound for ports around the world. Most of the incoming grain is handled at the terminal that was built in 1907. It has faster unloading (but slower loading) facilities. From 25-30 ships a year arrive to unload grain (some unload only part of their cargo). Up to 15 outbound ships, capable of handling up to 25,000 tonnes, are loaded a year. The elevator can load at a rate of 1,000 tonnes per hour. Elsewhere, you wonÕt find many railway tracks left in Huron County but here the Goderich-Exeter Railway, a local short-line company, is kept busy taking grain to and from the elevator and salt from the salt mine. The harbour and rail line have been a part of Goderich history for more than a century. The Grand Trunk Railway built the first grain terminal in Goderich in 1866 but it burned to the ground in 1897. A group of seven entrepreneurs were recruited to form The Goderich Elevator and Transit Company Limited in 1898 which raised $150,000 to build a new wooden terminal but this burned in 1905 in a blaze so ferocious the flames could be seen in Clinton, 12 miles away. By 1907 the facility had been replaced with a concrete terminal which is still part of the complex. The elevators have been expanded many times since then. The years of the Second World War were the busiest time for the harbour with Europe desperate for food and wheat from western Canada being trans-shipped to CanadaÕs east coast. In those days, before the St. Lawrence Seaway opened, lake boats carried all freight through the small locks of the St. Lawrence system. Large fleets of grain boats (up to 22 in 1928) harboured in Goderich during the winter. The opening of the Seaway in 1959 diminished the grain traffic through Goderich initially but by 1970 it had rebounded. Across the harbour, the history of the Goderich salt mine is not nearly as long but is just as interesting. While the towers over the three shafts of the mine and the huge self-unloading ships that call to fill up with salt are impressive, the fantastic world people seldom see lies hidden below the waters of Lake Huron. Here, 1,700 feet underground, lies a maze of rooms and facilities more than two miles square, extending more than a mile out under Lake Huron. A network of roads totals many more miles than those of the town of Goderich. There is none of the sense of claustrophobia of other types of mines because the ceilings of the tunnels are 43 feet high. Dozens of trucks and loaders drive the streets of this underground city. They were taken down piece by piece through the shafts and reassembled underground. If they need repairs, an underground repair shop does the job. All this has been built since the first shaft was sunk by Sifto Salt in 1959 but Goderich has a century-old history with salt. The salt in Goderich is part of a large deposit known as the Michigan Basin, a 350-million-year-old saucer-shaped deposit over parts of Ontario, Michigan and Ohio. Back in 1866, spurred on by dreams of riches from the oil discovery farther south at Petrolia, Samuel Platt drilled for oil on the edge of Goderich Ñ and struck salt (ironically in Petrolia they'd drilled for water and struck oil). Soon, in other Huron towns like Clinton, Seaforth and Blyth, salt wells were drilled, water pumped down to dissolve the rock salt, the brine was pumped to the surface and evaporators using cheap wood fuel, were used to create dry salt. The salt industry died everywhere but Goderich by 1880. Sifto also operates a salt well further east in Goderich producing table salt. Most of the rock salt from the mine is used for road salt or goes to the chemical industry. From a first small hole in the ground in 1959, the salt mine has grown to be one of the largest employers in Huron County with hundreds of employees. Back to goderich |
