At the harbor end, the canal is straddled by the Aerial Lift Bridge which connects Minnesota Point to the rest of the city.

On the north side, there is a building housing the local Corps of Engineers administration, as well as the Lake Superior Maritime Visitor Center.

[5] An 1866 report by Lt. Col. W. F. Raynolds of the Bureau of Topographical Engineers recommended cutting a canal through Minnesota Point, but due to the cost, no action was taken.

[5][6] This began in 1870, and politicians in Wisconsin, seeing traffic through Superior threatened, went to the war department to have construction stopped, eventually obtaining an injunction on July 13, 1871.

The canal was completed two months earlier, with local lore holding that on April 30, 1871, a group of city residents, summoned by brewer (soon to be mayor) Sidney Luce, came to the site with shovels and picks and dug the first connection between the bay and the lake.

[5] Federal responsibility for the latter, a result of the 1873 River and Harbor Act, gradually expanded into jurisdiction over all facilities in the area, with the Corps of Engineers taking over the canal in 1887.

This came to nothing, but the following October, flyers were distributed to shipping offices stating that a rope would be stretched across the canal on the fifteenth of the month to deny passage to all vessels.