Mohawk Mill

They stand tall and proud across the copper country landscape. Seemingly constructed as impressive monuments to an industrialized time, their gray columns rise high above the surrounding forests and towns. Once these pillars coughed out over the land, spewing black smoke into the air in a continuous stream of filth. They are smokestacks and they once marked the houses and buildings around it with a coat of black soot and turned the blue sky into a gray haze. No longer however.

Getting the copper out from the underground is only the first step in the copper production process. The copper that leaves the mine is encased in a tomb of igneous rock, which needs to be removed. This process is carried out at the stamp mill. Copper rock removed from mines was shipped to numerous stamp mills scattered across the Keweenaw. Each mine would have it’s own stamp mill, such as the Mohawk Mill at Gay.

The monolithic Gay stack that stood impressively above our heads seemed to be on its own. Besides a cement “flu” that arched down from the stack to the ground, no other buildings or ruins could be seen around it. Stamp Mills relied on steam power to drive the stamps, and that steam was supplied by coal fed boilers – to which the smokestack should have been connected. But we couldn’t see anything.

It was the ruin that sat at the far end of this level that was most intriguing. At first we thought it was a wall about waist high with a circular opening in its face. When we stepped up to it we saw that while a few feet high on our side, the opposite side dropped a good twelve feet into a building. The ceiling had collapsed at one point, or had been foreably removed. A frame of twisted and tangled rebar ran the inside edge of the walls. Noticing a doorway on the opposite side, we climbed down off the level to take a look.

The purpose of the Mohawk Mill – as with any stamp mill – was to separate the copper from the rock that incased it. The process relied on the differing physical properties of the two substances, specifically the weight and hardness. Copper was of a greater density then the igneous rock that surrounded it, resulting in a heavier and tougher substance. This made it much easier to separate the two

Stamps were large, heavy, and cumbersome pieces of equipment. Most mills only had a few, and only the real profitable mines (such as C&H) could install more. The Mohawk Mill had 4 stamps. Only question was: where were they? Not that we expected to find them (most stamps were removed for scrap) but we at least expected to find a pedestal on which they once sat. These were large pieces of equipment that required a good amount of structure to support i

As we neared the edge of the second level, we looked down across a zone of destruction. The lower level was a mess, a tangle of concrete, reinforcing bars, steel beams, cables, and any other industrial material you could think of. There were no obvious foundations, or walls, or pedestals, or anything. Only a flat slab of concrete fighting to breath through a tangles mess of ruin could be discerned. It was as if the entire upper and middle floors were raked down onto the lower level and forgotten – a real mess.

Sitting among the scattered remains of the Mohawk Stamp Mill was a large concrete monolith. Apparently single block of concrete a good 15 feet in height and 30 feet in length, this structure sat haphazardly upon the ruins – almost as if it was simply dropped there. It looked out of place sitting alone in a field of stamp sand a good distance from the lower level. So we decided to check it out.

It is a strangely off-worldly experience to step out from the stamp mill ruins and onto the barren landscape of the sands. Gazing out across its desolate expanse stretching towards the horizon, you can’t help but feel as if you are standing on another planet.

The great expanse of stamp sands we currently were standing on, all originated from the Mohawk mill behind us. The water/stamp sand solution that exited the stamp mill was carried by water chutes (called launders) to the lake’s edge where they were dumped. Over time, the stamp sands would fill the lake bottom and build up until they formed new land along the lake’s edge. When this happened, the launders were extended across these sands to open water and the process repeated. Over the years these launders would be extended multiple times, and in the case of the Mohawk mill, reaching a good half-mile into the lake.