Quincy Mine

One of the most celebrated and successful mines along the Keweenaw was “old reliable” atop Quincy hill. For almost a century and a half the mine produced 1.5 billion pounds of copper and paid its shareholders over 30 million dollars in dividends. But the mine’s reputation today ignores its very precarious and troubled beginnings. While the mine was established in 1846 – one of the Keweenaw’s earliest – it wouldn’t make a profit or pay a single dividend until almost 20 years later. Its early troubles stemmed from the lode Quincy first worked – the stubborn Quincy Lode. Although initially promising, the lode proved to be nothing but and mired the company in failure for decades. It wasn’t until the highly rich Pewabic lode was discovered nearby (around 1857) that the mine began to show promise. The rest is history.

Attached to the south end of the dry house was a second much larger building. If it wasn’t in ruin it would appear to be simply part of the rest of the structure, but in it’s current state you could see that the attached structure had a second floor (or at least an attic space) which the first half of the structure did not. This part of the building also had more embellishments over the windows and doors in the form of brick arches. And due to the topography here, it also had a basement.

Before the acquisition of the Pewabic Mine (which became North Quincy), the Quincy Mine consisted of a total of nine shafts. As time progressed and technology improved Quincy closed down most of these shafts and concentrated its efforts on only three: the no. 2, no. 4, and no. 7. In addition to these shafts, Quincy also utilized a man shaft between the No. 2 and No. 4. This shaft was equipped with a man engine – a type of mechanical ladder used to bring men down into the mine.

For most of Quincy’s early history the vast majority of its production came out of only two shafts – the NO. 2 and NO. 4. While it had originally opened up nine shafts along the copper-rich Pewabic lode, most were abandoned rather quickly once poorer ground was discovered. Because of this, these two shaft received most of the companies attention well up to the turn of the century as the company updated hoist equipment and shaft house’s as needed. In the end, however, it was the No. 2 that received the majority of Quincy’s attention – and the No. 4 simply faded into history.

For most mines along the Keweenaw shaft numbering was simple. The first shaft you sunk was the No. 1. Every shaft after that was named sequentially – working your way along the lode. Going from north to south, or vice versa, you would have the No.1, followed by the No. 2, then the No. 3 and so on. All pretty simple and easy to understand. Quincy did things a little differently. If you follow the lode from north to south you have the following order: No. 8, No. 6, No. 2, No. 4, No. 7. This always seemed wrong to me for a long time. At first glance it didn’t make much sense, and it looked like Quincy just arbitrarily named their shafts whatever they felt like at the time. Well, it turns out there was a method to their madness.

It was only a short walk to an impressive find: the No. 7 Boiler House. Here was a boiler house with all of its walls still intact, complete with a massive base for the old stack. But while the find in itself was something on its own, more interesting to me was how beautiful the building was – even in its ruined state (perhaps even more so because of it). The gray walls of rock which made up the tall walls of the building were accented in several places by the bright red of brick and Portage Entry Sandstone.

If it wasn’t for the discovery of the Pewabic Lode by Quincy’s northern neighbor, “old reliable” may have never survived its misfortunes along the Quincy Lode. It didn’t take Quincy long to find the Pewabic’s extension onto its property and begin sinking shafts to exploit it. But while the Pewabic lode may have single handedly saved Quincy from oblivion, it wasn’t so helpful to the Pewabic Mine. For the next 30 years the Pewabic Mine languished to find a profitable amount of copper along its section of the lode. In the end it couldn’t make it work and Quincy happily snatched its property up for its own.

When Quincy acquired the Pewabic Mine it inherited an obsolete and dilapidated surface plant consisting of an old shaft/rock house, hoist house, a few carpentry shops and a boiler house. Quincy re-used as much as they could, but a few new buildings had be built for its new No. 6 shaft. One of these was a boiler house – which can be seen in the photo above. Built in 1892, this small boiler house served the new No. 6 hoist as well as the compressor house and new blacksmith / machine shops.

Before the acquisition of the Pewabic Mine, Quincy operated only two shafts set only a few hundred feet apart. Because of this they only needed one centralized dry house to service both. The system worked wonderfully for years until Quincy opened their No. 6 shaft along the old Pewabic property. This shaft was too far removed from the rest of Quincy to share its dry house so a new one had to be constructed. To save money Quincy chose to rehabilitate one of the Pewabic’s old structures and use that as a dry house. The structure they chose was an old boiler house.