The Pere Marquette Line Steamers was the last firm to serve Manistee’s passenger and package freight business, operating from extensive dockside facilities along the south side of the river below the Maple Street bridge, where neighboring warehouses and offices supported freight handling, ticketing, and waiting rooms. In 1903, Gus Kitzinger of Manistee organized the Manistee, Ludington and Milwaukee Railroad to buy from the Pere Marquette Railroad and operate the passenger and package freight steamers Pere Marquette 2, 3, and 4. Most of the business involved transporting barreled salt from Manistee. Within a year, W.S. Eddy of Saginaw purchased the company and reorganized it as the Michigan Salt Transportation Company, with Kitzinger as general manager, but throughout these changes and for its entire existence the firm continued to use the popular name Pere Marquette Line Steamers. The company owned and operated its original vessels and added or replaced others as needed, including Pere Marquette 6, 7, and 8, the Virginia, and the Nevada. The Nevada was especially important because it had been built as an ice-breaking package freighter, allowing continued year-round cross-lake service as needed until 1934. In that year, the Pere Marquette Line Steamers merged into the Wisconsin and Michigan Transportation Company, ending seven decades of year-round passenger and package freight service between Manistee and Milwaukee.