Perfect Duluth Day: Actually, it could be just about anything

In a previous post about the mysterious timber crib that washed ashore last week, I included the text of a Duluth News Tribune story suggesting it's part of an old train trestle from the 1870s.

That's not the only opinion out there, however.

"Could also be the breakwater that failed time and time again before it was permanently removed," local author/historian Tony Dierckins told me last week.

Thom Holden, director of the Lake Superior Maritime Visitor Center, told WDIO-TV the same thing today. The breakwater was built by the Lake Superior and Mississippi Railroad in the late 1800s to protect two grain elevators near that spot.

Dierckins also said the crib might be a part of those elevators, both of which burned in 1886.

My first guess was that the crib could be from the ship canal's old south pier. That was built from timbers in 1874 and torn down when the canal was widened at the turn of the century. The spot where the crib washed up, however, leads me to believe the breakwater theory. Dierckins, however, said my pier idea shouldn't be totally dismissed.

"With this lake, it could have washed here from Ashland," he said. "Or perhaps it's the remains of a very primitive UFO."