City of Kalamazoo
Barge · Lost 1922 · Door County & Lake Michigan
Built to carry fairgoers to the 1893 Columbian Exposition, City of Kalamazoo ended her days as a stone barge holed on a Green Bay reef in 1922.
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The Vessel and Her Loss
John B. Martelle built the steamer City of Kalamazoo at South Haven, Michigan, in 1892 to carry passengers to the World's Columbian Exposition. A fire in 1896 killed three of her crew, and in 1911 she burned to the waterline. Raised in 1913, she was converted to a stone barge at Sturgeon Bay. On September 5, 1922, under tow of the tug Satisfaction, she was dragged over a reef entering Little Sturgeon, unloaded at the pier, and allowed to sink.
Vessel
- 1892
- Official no. 126949
- John B. Martelle
- South Haven, Michigan
- Wood
- 161.7 ft
- 31.8 ft
- Not established
- Towed
- Not established
Loss
- September 5, 1922
- Grounding
- Pier at Little Sturgeon, Green Bay, Wisconsin
- Green Bay
- Not established
- Construction materials for a dock at Kenosha
- Not established
- 0
- Not established
The Wreck Today
- Not established
- Not established
- Not established
- Identified 2021 from a 1922 photograph; surveyed 2022
- Listed on the National Register of Historic Places
Position
- Not established
- Position not established
- Little Sturgeon, Wisconsin
No pin: Wisconsin Shipwrecks inventory positions are not used as wreck pins.
Evidence
Overall confidence: Documented (75/100)
Original newspaper accounts are quoted by the source and were not independently inspected.
Wisconsin Shipwrecks (Wisconsin Historical Society and Wisconsin Sea Grant) — City of Kalamazoo
Specification table, service history and final-voyage text read; quoted newspapers not independently inspected.
