The Department of the Interior recently announced that the SS Badger; the last coal-fired, passenger car ferry operating on the Great Lakes; has been designated as a National Historic Landmark. From the news release: The designation recognizes the Badger’s exceptional value and quality in illustrating an aspect of American transportation technology in the mid-twentieth century.

This is the culmination of a major reversal of fortune for the almost 63-year-old 410-foot long coal-fired passenger-car ferry, which only a few years ago was called “the filthiest ship on the Great Lakes.”  Each year, the ship which operates in Lake Michigan, would dump around 500 tons of toxic coal ash into the lake. The ship had been subject to an EPA consent decree to either stop the dumping or end operations. Now, a new conveyor system has been installed to store the ash in four removable containment containers, which are taken ashore at the end of each trip. The ash is then sold to be used to make concrete. The ship’s combustion control system has also been upgraded to burn coal more efficiently and to generate less ash.  Between the onboard storage and the system upgrades, the SS Badger no longer needs to dump ash into the lake.  The ship is powered by four Foster-Wheeler water-tube type D boilers driving two four-cylinder compound Skinner Unaflow steam engines, totaling 7,000 SHP.

From the Interior news release:

The SS Badger is the last remaining example of the Great Lakes rail/car ferry design that influenced the design of such ferries around the world. The first open-water crossing on which railcars were carried onboard occurred on Lake Michigan. For nearly a century, railroad car ferries extended rail lines across three of the Great Lakes, especially Lake Michigan. During that period the difficulty of arranging trackage rights on roads, the distance around the southern end of the lake, and congestion in the rail yards at Chicago all made the transport of railcars across the lake a more efficient and economical alternative.

“The SS Badger is a unique example of American ingenuity in transportation that has been crucial to our country’s economic development over the last century,” said National Park Service Director Jonathan B. Jarvis. “As the National Park Service celebrates its centennial anniversary, we look forward to a second century of helping preserve the more than 2,500 historic places and objects like the Badger that bear the distinction of being National Historic Landmarks.”