Central Mine

Sitting uncomfortably close to the Central School and nestled between a pair of rocky cliffs lies the Central Mines powder house. In this building was stored the mine’s supply of black powder, placed a safe distance away from the mine and town. The building is designed from the ground up to help contain any explosion that might occur inside. A major component of that design – its three foot thick walls – has helped it survive over a century and a half relative intact. Getting a closer look reveals a few other design elements unique to a powder house such as this.

Yesterday we took a first look at the powder house at Central, an impressive building still standing in the woods atop the bluff. Today we’ll take a look at the big picture, with a few panoramics of the building from a few different angles. The massive size of this building can only be appreciated by being right there next to it, but perhaps this Big Picture from next to its 3-foot thick walls can provide a small clue.

The Central Mine, like the Cliff and Copper Falls, was a fissure mine. Unlike a typical copper lode that could run for miles and miles, a fissure deposit was very localized. These fissure deposits also didn’t behave typically, running perpendicular to the ridges of the Keweenaw instead of along them, and dropping straight down instead of along an angled strike. The fissure deposit at Central was massive, dropping some 30 levels (and over 3000 feet) straight down into the earth.

We have featured a good amount of hoist ruins on this site. For the most part these have been mind-numbingly similar, from the “H” shape right down to the metal rods. What a pleasant surprise for us when we arrived at the hoist engine house for the #2 shaft and found the walls still standing, at least most of them. The only other hoist house with walls we had found thus far was at Mohawk #6 (although there was 1 wall still standing at Centennial #2), so this was a nice treat.

There is an odd paradox – at least to me – in what types of buildings mine companies built with rock and which ones they built with wood. Collar Houses, Shaft Houses, Rock Houses – all of these were always built with wood. We haven’t found one yet that was built with rock or even concrete (except the base of course). Hoist buildings, however, are almost all exclusively built from poor rock.