MOSEL, Wis. - The Wisconsin Historical Society announces the listing of the Mojave Shipwreck in the National Register of Historic Places on June 4, 2024. The barkentine is located in Lake Michigan, near Sheboygan County.

Mojave is a barkentine constructed in 1863 by master shipwright Steward McDonald in Detroit, Michigan, and operated in the Great Lakes through the grain and coal trades for only one year. On November 4, 1864, the Mojave was sailing from Chicago, Illinois with 18,460 bushels of wheat for William Petrie and Company of Buffalo, when it encountered heavy weather off Sheboygan. The vessel went down into a trough of waves, was swamped, and sank quickly. At least five individuals were lost with the ship.

The vessel lies in the lakebed below the surface in Lake Michigan with the bow, deck machinery, stern cabin, stern, and the ship’s hull intact. Additionally, the rigging and masts remain on site. As a canaller, a unique vessel type developed for traversing the Great Lakes and the Welland Canal locks in Canada, the Mojave was designed to carry the maximum amount of cargo through the locks. It transported grain from Midwestern ports in exchange for coal from New York and Ontario, Canada. Mojave provides historians and archaeologists the rare chance to study wooden schooner construction and the grain and coal trades.

State and federal laws protect this shipwreck. Divers may not remove artifacts or structures when visiting this site. Removing, defacing, displacing, or destroying artifacts or sites is a crime. More information on Wisconsin’s historic shipwrecks may be found by visiting Wisconsin’s Great Lakes Shipwrecks website: Wisconsin Shipwrecks.

Additional information for the Mojave Shipwreck is available at:

https://wisconsinhistory.org/Records/NationalRegister/NR2800

To learn more about the State and National Register programs in Wisconsin, visit: https://wisconsinhistory.org/hp/register/

About the Wisconsin Historical Society

The Wisconsin Historical Society, founded in 1846, ranks as one of the largest, most active and most diversified state historical societies in the nation. As both a state agency and a private membership organization, its mission is to help people connect to the past by collecting, preserving and sharing stories. The Wisconsin Historical Society serves millions of people every year through a wide range of sites, programs and services. For more information, visit wisconsinhistory.org.