Keweenaw National Historic Park, Hancock, Michigan
Mike Rowe of Dirty Jobs fame has a quote: “Every tangible thing our society needs is either pulled from the ground or grown from the ground.” Here on the Keweenaw Peninsula, the precious resource was copper. Copper as a material is extremely important in modern-day life. Copper is an excellent conductor of electricity, including uses in electric wires, circuits, batteries, generators, solar panels, and wind turbines. Copper is excellent in water pipes as it does not corrode. Copper is also an exceptional metal in alloys, famously forming bronze (with tin) and brass (with zinc), and many other materials. Historically, copper was also used in money, forming the base material of the U.S. Penny for almost 200 years, with copper last forming the base of the penny in 1982.
The Keweenaw Peninsula has an abundance of copper, but it requires extraction from the ground. Native tribes used copper ore in the area for thousands of years, first harvesting copper ore around 3000 B.C. The Quincy Mine was one of the mines that started during the copper boom in the 1840s. The mine went on to become the leading mine in the area due to offering housing to workers and their families. Most of the early miners were from Cornwall, with later miners coming from Finland, Italy, and the Balkans.
The copper vein in the mine was extensive. The Quincy #2 Mine Shaft extended over 9,000 feet at an angle and extended to a depth of 6,225 feet below the earth’s surface. Today, most of the 92 levels of mine shafts contain groundwater. The current lowest accessible shaft is level 7.
The Quincy Mine Company was profitable, paying dividends to investors from 1868 through 1920. The mine only suspended operation in 1931 because it was no longer profitable to extract copper from the site. The mine went into production again in World War II, but the mines ceased production after the war. Some production of the mine continued until the 1970s.
Visiting the mine today, everything is still in place as the workers left the mine when it closed. At the surface, visitors can tour the buildings related to the production of copper ore. Visitors can then descend the Cog Railway (One of three in the United States, the other two are on Pikes Peak in Colorado and Mount Washington in New Hampshire).
The Quincy Mine is an excellent preservation of a copper mine that memorializes the men who extracted copper ore from the ground and their sacrifices in building modern society.