This is a bill in chancery, filed in this court by the State of Wisconsin, by virtue of the constitutional provision which confers upon the court jurisdiction of suits between the States and between a State and citizens of other States. To the bill as originally brought the city of Duluth, as a corporation of the State of Minnesota, and, therefore, a citizen of that State, and the Northern Pacific Railroad Company, a corporation organized under an act of Congress, were made defendants. Whether the jurisdiction of the court could have been sustained in regard to the latter corporation, it is not necessary to inquire; for the plaintiff, before the final hearing, dismissed the bill as to the railroad company: and we are now, after answer, replication, and a large amount of evidence, to render our decree as between the State of Wisconsin and the city of Duluth.
This city is situated on the northern shore of Lake Superior, near its western extremity; and about seven or eight miles south-east of it, on the Wisconsin shore, is Superior City. A narrow strip of land, varying from three to eight hundred feet in width, projects itself from the shore at Duluth into the waters of the lake about seven miles, terminating just opposite Superior City, and opposite another point coming from the Wisconsin shore. The strip of land first mentioned is a part of the State of Minnesota, and is called Minnesota Point. West of Minnesota Point is a body of water lying parallel to it, and averaging a mile and a half or two miles in width, called Superior Bay, and still west of that a similar body, called St. Louis Bay. Into this latter empties the St. Louis River, draining a large area of country west of the lake, and discharging the water thus collected into the lake.
St. Louis Bay and Superior Bay are spoken of as parts of St. Louis River, as enlargements of that stream; and testimony is taken to show that the water does not flow from the lake east of Minnesota Point into these bays, and other testimony to show that it does. Whether these bays are considered as parts of Lake Superior, or as mere expansions of the river, is in our view immaterial; for it is a fact not denied that there is a current due to the river through both these bays, which, in the natural condition of the points of land we have mentioned, discharged itself into the main body of the lake at the southern end of Minnesota Point; and that this point was the natural entrance and exist of vessels from the lake into the bays, and from the bays into the lake. And previous to the act of the city of Duluth, presently to be mentioned as the foundation of this suit, it was the only passage for vessels into and out of the bay. There was here in this bay a natural harbor where vessels could anchor in safety, and it was the only one on Lake Superior within fifty or sixty miles of its western limit. Here grew up Superior City, at which all vessels landed which came by the great lake system so far west. Outside of the bay and east of Minnesota Point the lake was rough, and there was no protection for vessels from the winds and waves.
The passage or channel at this narrow entrance, which by complainant is called the mouth of the St. Louis River, was never very deep, and the bar, if it may be so called, gave great trouble on this account. For several years prior to 1871, the United States had made appropriations to remedy this difficulty; and a plan had been adopted and money expended in the construction of piers on each side of the channel, which, by confining the flow of the water within narrow limits, would, by the process of scouring, keep the channel from filling up, and it was hoped would also deepen it.