Great Lakes see a future beyond industry (USA TODAY)
Below are quotes from a great article in the USA today featuring Vermilion's own Chris Gillcrist, about the struggles of industrial towns as they try to convert to tourism and housing based.
"People forget that the Great Lakes were the superhighway of North America for 150 years," says historian Christopher Gillcrist, executive director of the Great Lakes Historical Society in Vermilion, Ohio. In the early 1900s, the Great Lakes transformed America through the development of steel mills and related industries."
"Today, the political and economic clout of tourism and real estate development is rising, especially at the state and local level. The influence of heavy industry has been sapped by the decline of industrial jobs through factory closings, automation and foreign competition."