SS Meteor and Old Firehouse & Police Museum Grand Reopening

Visit the SS Meteor Whaleback Museum and the Old Firehouse & Police Museum for their annual open house, Saturday, May 17 from noon to 5 p.m. Admission is free for one day only. Cake and coffee will be served in honor of anniversaries for both museums.

The SS Meteor celebrates her 35th Anniversary as a whaleback museum this year. Opening for tours in 1973, the Head of the Lakes Maritime Society (HMLS), whose governing board oversaw the successful operation of the Meteor, marked an auspicious milestone achievement of welcoming 300,000 visitors aboard the museum within its first 10 years. The same year, the board announced plans to open another historic site in Superior. The Old Firehouse & Police Museum would be housed in the city’s last remaining Nineteenth Century fire hall.

Station Number 4 was built in 1898, complete with stalls for the department’s horses and the rigs they pulled, including the steamer Charlie O’Hare. When the station doors closed for the last time, a group of volunteers organized by Leonard Rouse, Sr., whose son was a firefighter, convinced the city to preserve the historic building as a museum. The HLMS, along with the City of Superior and the newly formed museum board would partner in the administration of the museum.

This year the historic fire hall celebrates not only its 110th birthday, but its 25th anniversary as a museum exhibiting both firefighting and police history and artifacts. In honor of the occasion, the new Police Room exhibit will be opened to the public for the first time.

The SS Meteor and the Old Firehouse and Police Museum share a common history in the annals of Superior’s boom-town growth. They tell the story of a burgeoning city, flourishing on the profits of the industrial age, a city nick-named the Eye of the Northwest.

Superior Public Museums invites you to help us celebrate the anniversaries of these two historic sites by visiting them free of charge for one day only.