The City of Alpena II was an overnight passenger steamer operated by the Detroit & Cleveland Navigation Co., whisking Detroiters away to cities around Michigan and Ohio in an era before automobiles were commonplace.

Success and increased demand for travel to Michigan's lumber and mining towns led to larger and faster passenger steamers, including the City of Alpena II and her sister, the City of Mackinac II. These vessels, like the rest of the D&C Navigation fleet, were designed by revered naval architect Frank E. Kirby of the Detroit Dry Dock Co. Her interiors were designed by Louis Keil.

The boat name game is confusing, which is probably why D&C started using Roman numerals to help them keep track. We are including this next bit to hopefully clear up some of that confusion. In 1880, D&C brought into service the City of Cleveland (I). In 1885, that boat was renamed the City of Alpena (I). In order to keep up with advances in technology and to have the latest and greatest passenger boats on the lakes, D&C kept ordering new passenger liners and selling off older ones. After the 1892 sailing season, D&C sold the City of Alpena (I) and City of Mackinac (I) (built in 1883) to the newly formed Cleveland & Buffalo Transit Co., because it was replacing them both with new boats of the same name for the next year. The City of Alpena (I)/City of Cleveland (I) was renamed the steamer State of Ohio. The City of Mackinac (I) became the State of New York.

This all led to the boat profiled here being launched as the new City of Alpena (no Roman numeral at the time) on March 13, 1893, at the Detroit Dry Dock Co. in Wyandotte, Mich., as Hull No. 114. The 266-foot paddlewheel steamer featured coal-fired boilers and a vertical-beam engine pumping out 2,400 horsepower.

She was enrolled at Detroit on June 24, 1893, for what was then called the Detroit & Cleveland Steam Navigation Co., and began making runs between Detroit and Port Huron, Harbor Beach, Alpena, Cheboygan and Mackinac Island, Mich., as well as Toledo, Ohio. The City of Alpena could carry up to 400 passengers, who would stay overnight in her many staterooms. She also carried cargo, which was crucial in an era when there weren't highways or adequate roads to get to towns across the state.

"They filled the place which automobiles hold today," John Newton Poole, a Detroit engineer and maritime historian, told the Free Press for a June 28, 1936, story. "It didn't seem as though their day could ever pass. Everyone tried to make at least one trip a year on them, and the coming of the boats in the spring was a great event."

In 1912, she was renamed the City of Alpena II, falling in line with D&C's naming convention for similar ships, such as the City of Cleveland III and City of Detroit III (https://historicdetroit.org/buildings/city-of-detroit-iii). This could have been to keep customers from thinking that they were sailing on an out-of-date boat that was built in 1880 instead of 1893, as in the City of Alpena II's case.

With newer and larger passenger ships satisfying D&C's needs, the City of Alpena II and City of Mackinac II were sold on Dec. 22, 1921, to the Graham & Morton Transportation Co. of Chicago, painted in all white and renamed the City of Saugatuck, providing service on Lake Michigan. The City of Mackinac II became the City of Holland.

Graham & Morton merged with its competitor the Goodrich Transit Co. of Chicago in 1925. After that company went bust in 1933, the City of Saugatuck wound up in the hands of creditors and the Michigan Trust Co. From 1933 to 1935, she sat idle in Benton Harbor, Mich., until being sold at a marshal's sale on Dec. 16, 1935, along with the City of Holland, City of Benton Harbor and City of St. Joseph. The buyers were Abraham Derinsky Inc. of Grand Rapids, jointly with the Woodmere Scrap Iron & Metal Co. of Detroit, which announced that the steamers would be stripped of their cabins in the summer of 1936 and converted into barges for the wood pulp industry on Lake Michigan.

The City of Saugatuck was then towed to Wisconsin, where she languished for four years until her passenger cabins were finally removed in 1939, and she was turned into the barge named the Leona.

From there, she was sold July 13, 1945, to the Northern Paper Mills Co. of Green Bay, Wis., and renamed the Normil a year later. She then spent a brief period carrying petroleum products for the Marathon Petroleum Co. until being finally scrapped in 1957.