ASHLAND - In Rhinelander, the Hodag symbolizes the community.
In another northern Wisconsin community, it's something else.
And Ashland could be about to lose that icon.
"Everyone has an ore dock story," says Jan Cameron, the Vice President of the Ashland Historical Society Board.
Since it has jutted into Chequamegon Bay since 1916, it figures that folks here have a connection to Ashland's iconic ore dock.
"My grandfather helped build these ore docks," says Jeff Peters, an Ashland native.
"Pretty neat spot to be when it's midnight and the northern lights are out, and you're 21 years old," remembers Fred Tidstrom.
"We've been loving this dock as a community for a long, long, time, and it's really very difficult for us to see it go down," says Cameron.
But as it nears its centennial birthday, this symbol of Ashland's fate looks like it has been written.
Cameron is with the Ashland Historical Museum, a place where you can journey through time with the ore dock.
"It's a massive structure. If you stood it on end, it would be taller than the Sears Tower," she says.
Iron ore mined in northern Wisconsin and Michigan's Upper Peninsula would come to the Ashland area by train.
Rail cars would follow the tracks onto the top of the dock, and empty their cargo onto waiting barges below.
That ore was shipped to the vibrant steel mills across America.
Between miners and those on the trains, docks, and ships, the process was an economy in itself.
"People identify with a way of life. They're very proud of it, they cherish it. For so many years, so many people got their livelihood off of the ore dock," says State Rep. Janet Bewley, an Ashland Democrat.
Then, in the middle of the 20th century, "as soon as the mines stopped mining, the ore stopped being shipped. It was as simple as that," Cameron says.
The last ship left the dock with ore in 1965.
For more than forty years, Ashland's beloved symbol sat dormant.
Then, the seemingly unthinkable.
"It just became too much of a liability. It's been a bitter pill," Cameron says.
The owners, the Canadian National railroad, after talking with several government groups, started taking it down.
"It's hard. It's hard to see a way of life go away," says Bewley.
But the metal was rusting, the wood was deteriorating, and the concrete was breaking.
The environmental and safety liability was just too much, something tough for natives here to take.
The nearly 100-year old ore dock is not only an iconic image in Ashland.
It's part of something deeper for people who live there, and whose families have lived there for generations.
It's part of their identity.
"Ashland High School is named after the ore dock. They're the Oredockers," says Peters.
Tidstrom was on the 1946 Ashland football team that helped give them that name.
Ashland shocked Wausau High School with a 13-7 upset win.
Wausau had won 46 straight games coming in.
A local sportswriter captured the excitement.
"After the game, he wrote up the story, and he called us the Oredockers. We thought that was pretty cool," Tidstrom remembers.
Now, the monument the team was named after is in danger of vanishing.
"Once it's gone, we get comments as bad as, 'do we get to be the No-Dockers?'" says Cameron.
"I tell them, it isn't the dock, it's the men. They were a proud group of men that had a dangerous job to feed their family. So you're honoring the men, not the dock," says Tidstrom.
Already the upper structure is mostly gone.
Other parts of the dock will continue to be dismantled.
But that doesn't mean the ore dock's legacy has to disappear forever.
The dock's base, everything near or below the waterline, remains in good condition.
"To build upon it is a very do-able thing. It's of a scale that, I think, resonates with people in a much more obtainable way," Bewley says.
Peters is one of the people thinking ahead to new memories that could be made on the new look of the ore dock.
He's not short of ideas.
"Educational interpretive center...a cruise line has expressed interest...transient boat docking facility...fishing piers for kids," says Peters. "The most important thing is if area residents, citizens, want to see the ore dock preserved and renovated, they've got to show their support right now. As I see it, we can win, but we need a real grassroots level of support."
"We will always have a dock. We will always have that. Then we'll have that to build tomorrow on," Bewley says.
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