It was surprising that we hadn’t noticed it before, as large and monolithic as it was. Standing alone and set a few dozen feet away from the rest of the ruins was the brick “cube” seen in the photo above. Though unconventional in both shape and material, we knew what we had found. This was the base to a smokestack, which meant by extension that those tunnels we had just explored belonged to the Ojibway’s boiler house.

According to Sanborn maps, the steel stack that once stood atop this peculiarly made brick foundation rose to nearly 80 feet. The brick base is built out of that same oddly colored brick we found next door at the boiler house itself. But into the bricks was this narrow “notch” which circled the structure’s waste. I would guess that an iron strap might have once sat inside this notch, used to help stabilize the entire cube.

Featured along the stack base’s front facade was the arched flue opening, through which exhaust gases from the boiler house would have travelled. The opening was partially buried by a half century of dirt and leaves and the flue itself – that would have once travelled between here and the boiler house – had disappeared. However it was still perfectly lined up with a similar arched opening protruding out of the boiler house remains. This would mean that at least one of those tunnels we explored earlier was in fact part of the stack’s flue.

With its identity now confirmed, we turned back to the sprawling ruin-scape which had confounded us earlier. Besides the string of tunnels and man-holes scattered throughout the forest, there were also more then a few foundation walls to be found as well. Here’s a rather thick poor-rock foundation, which I would guess marks the boiler house’s outside wall.

Here’s another one. The boiler house’s outer wall is to the right, with a large concrete-topped foundation sitting behind it. The boiler’s themselves would have sat atop that foundation. According to Sanborn maps the foundation supported two boilers.

Following that boiler foundation into the building itself we find a line of “U” shaped alcoves running along the west end of the foundation, all of which are lined with more organic bricks. A few of these alcoves feature some of the tunnels we explored previously.

One of those tunnels, however, was not part of this boiler foundation at all. This particular tunnel made its exit through the boiler house’s outer wall and made its way westward. Most likely this particular tunnel once housed a steam pipe, a steam pipe which was heading off towards a steam powered piece of machinery. Exactly what piece of steam powered machinery we’ll have to find out next week…