Now that we have a vehicle that can more readily travel along the old roads near Copper Harbor we took a trip down an old road near the Clark Mine in search of the old mine’s powder house. The road is marked on maps as “Powderhouse Road”, so I had a feeling that we would find what we were looking for down its length. (It’s those sharp instincts of mine that allow me to find all these abandoned places) About a mile down its very rocky and rugged length we finally found it – conveniently right up alongside the road.
Unfortunately there was very little left of the old building, but considering its age that was probably to be expected. The building was extremely small – even for a powder house – measuring only about a dozen or so feet in length. Most of its walls had collapsed, leaving only a small section of its west and east walls still standing. Here’s the east facing wall, which is by far the most intact of the bunch.
Inside the small building sat a large pile of debris – rock from the walls and roof I would suspect. The pile was a good couple feet high, and made the old powder house look less like a building a more like a pile of rocks. While its west wall was also somewhat intact, it took a little more effort to make out its south wall just barely peeking up through the rubble. The panoramic above shows how the inside of the old building looked, including its east (left), west (right), and south walls. The north wall was just a pile of rubble.
I’m pretty confident that this is the Clark Mine powder house, due mostly to its location. It sits about half mile south of the old mine, just over a rugged ridge line. But it could very well belong to any number of other old mines that once called the region home. For now I’ll just refer to it as the Clark Mine Powder House until I find out otherwise….
Turns out this isn’t the Clark Mine Powder House after all. Thanks to Capt. Kurt, I now know this is most likely the Star Mine powder house. (See comments for further info) But once again, I could be mistaken..
Wow, I hate to do this to you as an avid fan and admirer of this site, but this either isn’t the Clark Mine powderhouse, or it is a second one. The Clark Mine powderhouse is incredibly well hidden, and almost completely intact other than the roof; one of the door hinges is even still in the frame. About 85% of the powderhouse I know of is there. I’d have to think about the compass direction, but if you were facing the Clark Mine information sign, the mine would be on the left, the powderhouse would be on your right, across the road from that driveway, deep in the tag alders and poplar shoots (I think that would be west), and only a couple hundred feet from the road. I was just there in the spring, but don’t have any pictures. It’s a very scenic and photogenic powderhouse. Hope this helps!
Relax Kurt, its not like I haven’t been wrong before. Anyway I wasn’t completely sure of its ID hence my last paragraph. After you destroyed my self esteem and worth for the day I took another look and came up with a new improved theory…
This powder house sits at N 47º26.252′, W 87º51.628′, which puts in within the north half of the south-east corner of section 9 in Township 58 Range 28. It sits approximately a half mile due south of the Clark Mine, along the current snowmobile trail.
After further research it appears that this location places this powder house along the northern regions of the Star Mine property, not the Clark Mine property as I had first assumed. So I would now be comfortable identifying this building as the old Star Mine powder house.
Thanks for the correction Kurt!
I plugged your coordinates into my maps and Kurt is correct, this is definitely not the Clark; it is the Star Mine. This spot is just west of the original Star mine East property line in section 9, the north boundary is on the other side of the bluff. The GPS coordinate you provided is actually several hundred feet west of the location of the powder house on my maps. To be more precise your GPS data needs to include one more digit and the datum used to measure the coordinate. I use datum WGS84 because it is more transportable among systems.
If you want a better adventure go back to the powder house, continue driving east on the road until you can’t go anymore, then walk down the old logging dozer trail until you start encountering trenches.
As you head east past the powder house you will encounter a fork in the road about 450 ft past the powder house, stay to the left. If you can make it down then up the other side of the steep swale driving, a picture with your vehicle ‘on the other side’ is in order. Once you can’t drive any more start walking following the old dozer trail. There are at least 8 trenches, each several hundred feet long that work their way across the hillside for as far downhill as I could see. It is the most impressive trench works I have seen in the Keweenaw.
This is the site of the Copper Harbor Exploration. The trenches were dug in 1854 and 1858 in an attempt to discover the next big payday — but it never panned out. There is supposedly an adit [filled in according to Kurt] and an uncharted transverse fissure vein. I haven’t found either so If you would be so good as to map out this exploration or at least provide GPS coordinates for those two spots I would greatly appreciate it.
Kurt stop laughing! ‘No recorded copper production’, I didn’t figure it was worth the work to map it all out; but for history buffs this could be a really cool adventure. If they find something interesting, you and I can check it out next time I’m up.
Bob
Bob…
New to the whole GPS thing myself, used the setting I was using for Geocaching. I assume it would be more accurate to report coordinates in decimal degrees instead of degrees and minutes? (I was using, and will continue to use for future reference WGS84)
The error is most like due to the fact that I was moving away from the powder house in my car as I grabbed the point. I was only planning to get the general location for future reference and had not planned on mapping its specific location.
The Copper Harbor workings sound interesting but I’m not sure if they would make great material for the web. Trenches aren’t the most photogenic of mine remains to find. I’ll still have to take a look for curiosity’s sake thats for sure (and for history’s sake as well)