It would be awesome to go back in time and see some of these remote port cities in their heyday (such as Marquette, Duluth).
There are regular harbor cams and freighter watching videos on Youtube. [2][3]
There is an old lake freighter open to tour. [4]
There are several good breweries (probably better quality than what would have been available peak Duluth!).
The University of Minnesota does have historical aerial survey photos of the port starting in the 1930s, but modern Google Maps satellite is probably better to get a sense of the port. [5]
If you travel up the north shore, Two Harbors is also still an active port. There's a good brewery there. And still further up the coast, there's also an old lighthouse that can be toured. [6]
Not a local, just a fan. But as a fan of history, I agree it would be so interesting to time travel.
[1] http://duluthport.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/2021-Tonnag...
[2] https://www.youtube.com/@DuluthHarborCam1
[3] https://www.youtube.com/@PaulScinocca
[4] https://decc.org/william-a-irvin/
People who've tried certain VR experiences know it's SUPER immersive (seriously, I had a physical adrenaline spike when I was on the edge of a platform hundreds of meters up in Vader immortal) - having that kind of experience in an educational setting is going to cause those experiences to embed, and with them, the subject being learned, far better than any book for some people.
It would be a sight to see. For scale, in the 1860s and 1870s Chicago was the busiest port in the US; "In 1871, more ships arrived [in Chicago] than New York, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Charleston, and Mobile combined" [1]. I imagine that Marquette or Duluth would have a top-10 busiest port in the US at that time - where else would all those ships be coming from?
[1] http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/300010.html
I wanna go run their ultramarathon sometime! https://www.marquettetrail50.com/