<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0A quick quiz: \u00a0How many different types of mines have there been in Upper Michigan? \u00a0This is a question I ask my sixth grade Geography – Earth Science students at the beginning of the Geology unit we cover that includes U.P. \u00a0mining history. \u00a0Everybody comes up with \u201ccopper\u201d, and a few might remember \u201ciron\u201d, but that is a pretty short list. \u00a0Before we get very far in our discussion of mining, we have to define exactly what constitutes \u201ca mine\u201d. \u00a0Right from the beginning, they are introduced to the term \u201cextractive\u201d because that one word applies to all mined materials. \u00a0\u00a0I like to broaden the scope of the discussion by telling them a little story to get their wheels turning.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Professor Jarl Roine was the head of the Geography Department at Northern Michigan University when I was finishing my MA degree there in the 1979-80 school year. \u00a0We were discussing the very topic of Upper Peninsula mining in an Urban Planning class and one of the students asked Dr. Roine, \u201cIf you could own any type of mine, what would you want to own?\u201d \u00a0His surprising answer was, \u201cA gravel pit.\u201d \u00a0Some of us thought he was pulling our leg until he said, \u201cLet me explain. \u00a0I would want to own a gravel pit on the outskirts of New Orleans, Louisiana. \u00a0New Orleans is growing fast and they have to import all of their gravel by barge from the northern reaches of the Mississippi. \u00a0Think of how much gravel goes into buildings, levees, \u00a0and roads. \u00a0The value of an extracted resource is often relative to the abundance or scarcity at any one location.\u201d \u00a0Imagine how the value of the resource would have increased in the wake of Hurricane Katrina! \u00a0I thought this was a practical, Yooper answer and it should not have surprised me. \u00a0Dr. Roine often told us about growing up in the U.P. at a time when it was not uncommon for his father to whittle the forks and spoons their family used for dinnerware. \u00a0Now my students have three items on their U.P. mine list: \u00a0copper, iron, and gravel. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The glacial history of this area goes a long way toward explaining why we have seemingly unlimited sources of sand and gravel. \u00a0The postglacial period of our history included a lot of moving water and moving water carries sediments. \u00a0The faster the water flows, the larger the particles of rock it can move (the volume of water on the move also plays into this method of transportation). \u00a0As soon as the water speed and\/or volume is decreased, the heavier particles begin to drop out and form layers. \u00a0From the surface, this may not be obvious, but looking at the walls of any sand or gravel pit that has glacial origins shows definite patterns in the layers of sediments. \u00a0Wave action along the shore of the early Great Lakes also helped sort out these particles. \u00a0One of the most detailed soils samples taken by one of my students came from the Maple Grove Cemetery in Greenland. \u00a0The young man needed to take a sample and when he noticed the sexton opening a new grave, he asked if he could get his sample before the upcoming internment. \u00a0He was surprised by the multiple layers of sand and gravel he found and ended up taking close to two dozen different samples. \u00a0This isn\u2019t hard to fathom if one remembers that the ridge on which the early copper mines in the Mass City – Greenland and Rockland areas were founded were actually a string of bare islands in early Lake Superior (whose earliest shoreline lay much further south in the Bruce Crossing area). \u00a0Wave action around the islands built beaches just as the current lake does and depending on the intensity of the wave action, the beach will consist of alternating layers of sand, pea gravel, and gravel. \u00a0Using these sand and gravel deposits requires them to be extracted from the Earth and I that is why I remind my students that this is the very definition of \u201cmining\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Sediments laid down in more ancient days often became sedimentary rocks that also have layers we can see. \u00a0The red sandstone cliffs at the head of Keweenaw Bay between L\u2019Anse and Baraga show tell tale signs that these rocks were at one time sediments laid down by moving water. \u00a0Indeed, the Jacobsville sandstone quarried along the Keweenaw Bay side of the Keweenaw Peninsula was shipped to distant points and was prized as a durable yet beautiful building stone. \u00a0Finer sediments laid down in deeper waters east of what is now Huron Bay (at the abandoned town site called Arvon) formed a shale deposit that was eventually squeezed under heat and pressure to rearrange the structure of the atoms in the rock. \u00a0This metamorphic form of shale is a much harder (yet similarly layered) rock called slate which can be quarried and milled into blackboards and shingles. \u00a0Henry Ford took full advantage of these resources and most of his buildings in the Detroit area are built from Jacobsville sandstone and roofed with slate from the Arvon slate quarry. \u00a0The sediments that formed both of these valuable resources were washed out of the ancient mountain ranges that roughly paralleled what we now see as the Canadian and Michigan sides of Lake Superior and deposited in the ocean that lay just to our south (the complete history of the the building up and wearing down of these mountains will have to be discussed at another time).<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0If one is counting, the list of things mined in the U.P. now numbers six: \u00a0copper, iron, gravel, sand, sandstone, and slate. \u00a0Another mineral that is often associated with copper is silver. \u00a0Silver City just east of the Porcupine Mountains Wilderness State Park was known to have some silver deposits (hence the name change from the original \u201cBeaser\u201d to the present name). \u00a0On the opposite shore of the big lake, there is the fabled Silver Islet mine that has a rich history of being difficult to mine because it is located on a low island just off the north shore of Lake Superior. \u00a0The most interesting tale of silver mining in the U.P. is told in the book <\/span>Wall of Silver<\/span><\/i>. \u00a0According to legend, a prospector found a hidden mine entrance somewhere at the base of the same ridge of the Keweenaw Peninsula that the Cliff Mine was located. \u00a0Upon entering and exploring this nondescript tunnel, the prospector discovered many mining tools and evidence of more ancient mining than the 1880\u2019s copper boom. \u00a0Further in, he reportedly found a solid wall of silver that had never been extracted. \u00a0He covered up the entrance and never showed anyone else where it was located, thus sending many fortune hunters off in search of the fabled wall of silver mine. \u00a0Silver \u00a0has not been extracted in the same quantities as copper and iron, but it has been mined. \u00a0Even today\u2019s copper pickers value the copper-silver nuggets that bring a fair price on the mineral selling market.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0More recently, the Eagle Mine located north of the Yellow Dog Plains in Marquette County has added nickel to the list of U.P. mines. \u00a0There has been a lot of controversy over the construction of this mine, but it is in operation and the ore is shipped by truck to their processing plant located at the refurbished Humboldt iron mine near Republic. \u00a0The concentrated ore is then shipped by rail to a refinery for final processing. \u00a0The total life of the original mine was projected at about twenty years but a new deposit located near the mine is in the process of being developed to help extend the operation beyond the original estimates. \u00a0If they can find a way to get a permit granted to improve the shorter trucking route south (thus avoiding US 41 and the cities of Marquette, Negaunee and Ishpeming), they will be able to avoid burning hundreds of thousands of gallons of fuel currently needed to ship by the longer route. \u00a0Silver and nickel have now lengthened our list to eight. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Processed copper and raw nuggets can be traced to their area of origin by analyzing what other elements they contain. \u00a0We mentioned copper and silver being found together, but it is the trace amounts of gold found in U.P. copper that make it a valuable tool for tracing how far our native copper has travelled. \u00a0Indeed, the Terracotta \u201carmy\u201d found buried in the tomb of the first Chinese emperor <\/span>Qin Shi Huang<\/span> had copper spear tips that contained the gold signature of U.P. copper. \u00a0The next question would be, \u201cBesides the gold traces found in copper, was there ever enough gold in the U.P. to support a gold mine. \u00a0The answer is \u201cyes!\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0In 1979-80, I was finishing my Master\u2019s Degree in Geography at NMU. \u00a0My office mate Mike was also a graduate student who surprised me one day by mentioning that before he came back to work on his MA, he had been working underground at the Ropes Gold Mine north of Ishpeming. \u00a0I had never heard of such a thing. \u00a0Mike said that when the price of gold began to rise, a company reopened this long closed mine and was actually making a modest profit. \u00a0He left when the price of gold dropped and the company began to make decisions based on lowering the cost of mining without enough regard as to the welfare of the workers. \u00a0In the late 1970s, the \u2018rise in gold prices\u2019 was up to a whopping $300 per ounce. \u00a0I wonder if the current plethora of \u201cgold fever reality shows\u201d will dredge up this mining effort again with the price of gold now hovering around $1000 an ounce?<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0With gold coming in at #9, we should also mention lead as mining material #10. \u00a0A history of the L\u2019Anse area written by the history classes of L\u2019Anse high school in the 1920s mentioned two lead mines in the area. \u00a0One on the Falls River and one near the location that would eventually become Henry Ford\u2019s Alberta sawmill and town site. \u00a0I am not sure if it was actual lead or graphite that was mined, but the Alberta site is located on Plumbago Creek. \u00a0The name is a derivative of the Latin world for lead: \u00a0plumbum. \u00a0We use \u201cPb\u201d for the symbol for lead based on the Latin term the same way we use \u201cFe\u201d for Iron instead of \u201cIr\u201d, so we will take this as further evidence that there were lead mines in Baraga County. \u00a0The so called \u2018silver lead ore\u2019 (<\/span>Argentiferous Galena<\/span><\/a>) lead prospectors over much of Marquette, Baraga and Ontonagon counties in search of the minerals that were often found in conjunction with lead and silver.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0As far as things that are NOT mined in the U.P. we can count coal and uranium. \u00a0There are no coal deposits located in the peninsula. \u00a0There is uranium in them there hills, but it just isn\u2019t concentrated enough for mining operations. \u00a0Just east of Sault Ste. Marie in the area surrounding Elliot Lake, Ontario, there is one active uranium mine left. \u00a0The base rock they are mining is similar to the granite deposits in the U.P., but this is a case of \u201cclose, but not close enough\u201d for us to count on our mining list. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0In answer to the original question, I will hang my hat on \u201cat least ten\u201d things that have been mined in the U.P. from ancient times until the present. \u00a0If there are more items that can be added to this \u201clist of things that have been mined in the U.P.\u201d, please feel free to let me know the when and where and I will add them to the map the next time my students revisit the topic.<\/span><\/p>\n Top Piece Tune – Roger McGuin’s\u00a0Your Love is like a Goldmine<\/em><\/p>\n