“It was in 1860 that the small mining location of Boston was born along a swampy stretch of land several miles north of Hancock. The mine in question was the Albany and Boston, which had attempted to mine a stretch of the Allouez Conglomerate. The ill-fated endeavor managed to build itself a lake, stamp mill and town but very little else. A few years later a second mine – the Peninsula – gave it the old college try but it too managed very little. Finally in 1895 the property was sold yet again, this time to the struggling Franklin Mine which was in a choke hold by its omnipresent neighbor, the Quincy Mine. For a time it looked as if the Franklin would suffer the same fate as its predecessors, but it soon discovered what all the other mines had managed to miss – profitably. For the next twenty years the mine managed to eek out a living and keep the Franklin Mining Company clinging to life.”