Copper Country Clips

Love this old-style stop sign found at the corner of 7th and Scott in Calumet. If you look close you’ll see others scattered about the city. I don’t know hold old these are, but they look to be built from a stamped piece of metal instead of wood like you see today. Also love how it makes sure you know why your stopping, because of a “thru street” – which is also funny considering 7th actually ends here at Scott.

Sitting all alone up there it seems out-of-place and perhaps even lost. But there it was, a concrete footing smack dab in the center of the Baltic No. 2’s massive poor rock pile. Why it was up here we weren’t exactly sure, it was the first time we found anything atop a poor rock pile besides poor rock. Made of concrete, it was topped by a iron eye-loop along with a pair of holes on its shaft facing side. It looked to be a tie down of sorts, or perhaps a footing for a trestle or pulley stand. Either way its placement atop a rock pile was odd.

The Phoenix Hotel (marked with the arrow) was once considered one of the grandest and finest in the Keweenaw, a title threatened only by the opulent contenders of the peninsula’s more metropolitan centers. The Phoenix was a 24 room two-story building that sat along the east bank of the Eagle River, across the way from the booming port’s lighthouse. As the mines out along the Cliff range prospered, the Phoenix found itself the hotel of choice for visiting investors and mine officials from both the Phoenix and Cliff mines.

To me some of the most illustrative examples of the Copper Country’s fall from grace is the faded and forgotten hydrants we find sitting alone in an overgrown field or deep in the shade of a forest. It’s a powerful image that seems to singularly incapsulate the fall of a once great civilization and its submission to the natural world. While buildings fall and roads crumble, these steel relics manage to remain for generations – standing in silent vigil of a world that no longer exists.

One of the more disturbing developments in the Copper Country is the abandonment and dismantlement of old-time public spaces and parks. The most egregious example of this is Agassiz Park, which was gutted and dismembered by the village in the name of affordable housing. Granted this example is extreme, in most cases the process is more gradual and less deliberate. Consider the WPA built Township Park in Traprock valley, Electric Park, White City, or the railroad parks at Freda and Crestview – all these were places once enjoyed by thousands but were abandoned and forgotten over time. Now they exist only as obscure names on an old faded map.

If you drive along Cliff Drive enough your bound to discover a large boulder sitting along the shoulder just west of the Cliff Mine itself, a boulder that has etched in its face a distinct rectangular depression. The depression is no doubt for a plaque of some type, no doubt commemorating some event that occurred here along the Cliff Range. Unfortunately the plaque is now gone, and all that remains is the oddly placed boulder. For many years I have always wondered what the plaque that sat here once said, and why it was here. Recently the Michigan Tech Archives was kind enough to answer those questions for me, thanks to a few recently scanned photos.

If you spend any time scouring the Keweenaw shore you are bound to find them, scattered seemingly randomly across rocky outcroppings and rugged cliffs. They are drill holes, driven into the shore by the peninsula’s early copper prospectors. I’m not exactly sure why they exist, or for what purpose. They seem too small to be core samples – only about an inch wide. But it also doesn’t make much sense to start a mine shaft along the Lake Superior Shore. But whatever their rhyme or reason they exist, and they exist almost everywhere.

Sitting at the head waters of Manganese Creek along the south shore of Lake Manganese runs a small footbridge, which today is home to one of Copper Harbors many mountain bike trails. But a closer look reveals the bridge’s footings sit atop a shallow rocky shelf over which the creek empties out of the lake, along with a few large pieces of timber and other debris. This is the remains of an old dam, which at one time served to produce mechanical power for a nearby saw mill.

This snowy landscape was captured during a snowshoe trip taken last year – just before Christmas – showcasing the Copper Country’s most abundant commodities: snow, ruins, and the wilderness.

The old town of Boston was named after the New England metropolis from which most of the Albany & Boston’s original investors hailed. But unlike its eastern namesake the Keweenaw’s Boston never grew to any discernible size. At its height the town only supported a few dozen buildings, including a Methodist Church, a public school building, an sandstone warehouse, and a general store. While taking our short walk through town on our way to the Franklin Jr’s No.1 shaft we came across one of old Boston’s long time residents: the Boston Store.