The Sturgeon Bay and Lake Michigan Ship Canal grew from the vision of Joseph Harris, Sr., who sought a shorter and safer route for sailing vessels and hoped to profit by selling lots in a planned town called Harrisburg near the lake end of the canal. After lobbying, extensive work, and a change in location, his Sturgeon Bay and Lake Michigan Ship Canal and Harbor Company received a state charter in 1864 to begin work three-quarters of a mile south of the projected town, but Harris never gained financially and Harrisburg was never built. In 1871 the federal government built a harbor of refuge on Lake Michigan where the canal would emerge, and although a lighthouse and fog signal were recommended in 1873, the light was not built until 1882. Canal construction began on July 8, 1872, then stalled for three years because of the Depression of 1873 before resuming in 1877. On June 28, 1878, at 7:30 p.m., the last shovelsful of earth were removed and the waters of Sturgeon Bay and Lake Michigan were joined. Local men and outside laborers recruited with promises of good wages worked on the project, though little written record survives about them. The first loaded ship towed through was the three-masted schooner America, bound for Chicago with lumber in 1879, but another four years were needed to complete the 7,400-foot canal to specifications that allowed the sailing vessels of the 1880s to use it safely. In its first full year of operation in 1882, 415 ships passed through the canal, and ten years later the number had risen to 3,949. In the early years, ships were charged for towing through the canal by local tug owners, whose competition was intense, and ship owners sometimes reduced costs by linking vessels together to be towed in groups, as in the Big Tow of six sailing ships. The completed canal shortened the trip from Green Bay to Milwaukee and Chicago by 150 miles and avoided the dangerous Death's Door passage at the tip of the Door Peninsula.