Mom's Rare Beach Find: a Historic Shipwreck

A mom and son hanging out at a Wisconsin beach have rediscovered a shipwreck that's been hiding in plain sight for decades. Hannah Damon, who works at Camp Amnicon in South Range, Wisconsin, was wading along the Lake Superior shoreline with her 9-year-old when they suddenly spotted beams, cables, and a large pipe beneath the surface—remnants of the AH Pitz, a 1923 steam tug, per Fox News. The nearly 70-foot vessel was abandoned at the mouth of the Amnicon River in 1951, reportedly sunk to help shore up a sandbar.

Usually obscured by the region's clay-clouded water, the wreck appeared only briefly before conditions turned murky again. Damon, who's spent time on the camp's shores every year for a decade, says it was her first sighting of the wreck, though she's long known it existed. It was "definitely a rare find" and "a really exciting discovery," she tells Fox. Her video of the find drew locals who shared memories of seeing the tug as far back as the 1960s. The wreck was last spotted above water some 25 years ago, reports Northern News Now.