There’s a Whole Car Museum at the Bottom of Lake Michigan

Within a ten day span in October, 1929, three ships sank in Lake Michigan, with a loss of 70 men. And the stock market crashed. Not a good month. One of the ships that sank was the SS Senator, which sank in the fog on Halloween night, off the coast of Wisconsin. The Senator sank after colliding with the SS Marquette, a 420-foot iron ore carrier. The Senator was loaded with 268 brand new cars from the Nash Motor Company in Kenosha.

According to MLive.com, the Senator is still down there, under 450 feet of water and video from a remotely operated vehicle shows that a lot of the cars are still in pretty good condition. Last month, the site of the wreckage was added to the National Register of Historic Places. Soon, that spot will be within the boundary of a pending National Marine Sanctuary. The other National Marine Sanctuary in the Great Lakes is off the coast of Alpena, MI in Thunder Bay and contains 116 historic shipwrecks.

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