 Lightfoot wrote it after traveling from Flagstaff, Arizona on Interstate 17 to Phoenix.In late November 1975, Lightfoot read a "Newsweek" magazine article about the loss of the , which sank on November 10, 1975, on Lake Superior during a severe storm with the loss of all 29 crew members.The lyrics in his song, "The Wreck of the "Edmund Fitzgerald"", released the following year, were substantially based on facts in the article.