Keweenaw Peninsula Part 1

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Our next destination after our week in the Porcupine Mountains would be to the northeast about 70 miles to the Keweenaw Peninsula which juts out from the UP of Michigan into Lake Superior. We had picked a city park about halfway to the tip of the peninsula in the town of Hancock. While it might be more interesting to camp all the way near the far end in Copper Harbor, there were a fair number of things to see in the Hancock area which would require us to make multiple day trips of an hour or so each way.

The drive was pretty uneventful until we were about 2 miles from the campground at the Hancock Recreation Area. I apparently missed a turn and the GPS decides to take a very roundabout way up a dead end street near a high school’s football field. There was no room to turn around so it looked like we would need to unhitch the Jeep and back out a block or so. But I walked over to the dirt road that goes behind the field and realize it wasn’t in great shape but we have driven the motorhome over worse. So we cautiously work our way past the end zone and back onto paved roads. I was a bit flustered when we finally pulled in and Chris goes in to register for the site we had booked 3 months ago. She walks back to say that the site we have reserved was damaged by the last visitor and the electric pedestal was possibly not working. Fortunately they had just gotten a cancellation that would work for the 5 nights we are planning on staying.

Hancock Campground Entrance

One of the major industries that used to be prevalent here back in the mid 1800’s through mid 1900’s was copper mining. Many of the old mines had fallen into disrepair but in 1992, the Keweenaw National Historic Park was created. There are two main locations - the Quincy and Calumet units. Each has a variety of things to see and do - including mine tours and ranger walks. The Quincy Mine is just a few miles from our campground and has daily tours into the old copper mine. We check that first evening and discover there was still availability for both the mine tour and the smelter tour for the following day. We sign up for the 9AM mine tour and the 2PM smelter tour.

We arrive Monday morning for our Quincy Mine tour. Coming up US-41, we can see one of the large buildings looming on the horizon. We had a little time to look around outside before going inside to check in for the tour.

Welcome to Quincy Mine

No 2 Shaft-Rock House

As we assembled in one of the rooms, our tour guide came in to introduce himself and get us going with a short movie that gives a great background to how this mine used to work. Our guide is a student at the nearby Michigan Technological University where he is studying about geology, mining with an emphasis on sustainability. He seems like a really bright kid and a good speaker as well. After the movie, he directs the 10 of us to the rack of hard hats which are required for the rest of the tour.

Hard Hats in Place

Our first stop is in the adjacent building that was the hoist house. Built in 1882 for the huge hoist. This is where we learned about how copper rich rocks in this part of Michigan were angled about 55 degrees from the surface so the mine shafts followed that angle to always be in the copper lode. The hoist that remains here for shaft #2 was the largest steam powered hoist ever constructed. It has a 30 foot diameter drum that held the heavy steel cables that ran up to the shaft-rock house. Two tracks ran parallel to each other and could raise one car (or skip) while another one was lowered helping to balance out the weights. It could move 10 tons of copper ore at 36 miles per hour! Roughly every 100 feet down the shaft, they would blast and dig out the copper ore creating horizontal drifts (or levels) and working in either direction until the copper quality was poor.

Huge Drum of Steam Powered Hoist

We learned that in early days, the miners needed to climb down and back up on ladders to get into levels where they were going to be working. As the mines got deeper and deeper they eventually came up with other ways to speed up this “commute” time since eventually the shaft length was 9260 feet long - a full 6200 feet below the surface. Our next stop was to head outside to start the fun part of the tour. We would board a cog driven tram car that would take us down the steep slope. I hadn’t investigated the tour information beforehand so I was thinking this was going to go into the mine.

Old Locomotive

Cog Driven Tram Car

Driver's Controls

Here We Go

The view from the tram car has a great view of the lift bridge that goes between Houghton and Hancock. The 18% grade definitely feels steep especially being able to see directly over the tour guide’s shoulder and look down. We end up going less than a half mile before stopping at another platform where we all head over to the mine entrance.

Quite the View

Looking Back Up the Track

Mine Tour Entrance

This entrance to the mine was originally opened in 1892 at the seventh level of the mine to provide for drainage. It had been a much smaller opening that would have required us crawling on all fours but in the 1970’s, Michigan Technological University enlarged the opening to a much more comfortable size that permitted vehicles to enter.

Wet and Dark Mine

Old Equipment

It is a cool and damp space and has very minimal lighting. We stop at various points along the way and our guide explains some of the mining history and workings of the Quincy mine. There is even one room that was blasted off the side of the tunnel which had been used as a classroom for the mining students from the university back in the 1970’s. I’m not sure I would have liked to have this space for classes!

Overhead Safety Fencing

At One of the Stops

Old Classroom

Another stop has some of the old one man and two man drills that were used to bore holes into the rock to be filled with dynamite for blasting. It was rather fascinating to think about how loud, dark and tiring it would have been to work in these conditions.

Pneumatic Drills

Drilling and Blasting Explanation

Our last stop was in an area where it was clear to see how the shape of the blasted area followed the angle of the old copper ore. The workers would need to climb a ways off of the given level but not going up too high as to break through to the level above. These side shafts would continue until the copper ore quality was too low to be worth removing.

Shaft Angle Follows Copper Ore

Even with New Ladders It Looks Dangerous

Old Ore Car

Our group slowly walked towards the daylight and back out of the mine to board the tram and head up the hill. It was a very enjoyable and informative tour and it was clear that our tour guide is really into the history of the Quincy Mine. There is a lot more to see on our own by walking the grounds. The old No 2 shaft-rock house was built in 1908 and is an impressive structure. Inside are many displays including some of the old carts used to raise miners, water and iron ore. There are also a few pictures that show just how deep and expansive this shaft was and how the rock house operated.

Another Rock House View

History of No 2 Mine Shaft Levels

Rock House Operations

Just outside the shaft house is a huge piece of “float copper”. Our tour guide had mentioned that when large chunks of pure copper were found, it wasn’t necessarily a good thing. Many times these were way too large to move by hand or with the equipment available. Pure copper is too malleable to break apart into smaller chunks and even explosives only deformed them. Sometimes they would use hammers and chisels to “cut” them into manageable pieces that could be hoisted out of the mine.

Fish Shaped Float Copper

There are lots of old buildings scattered around the grounds. Most are simply the stone walls of auxiliary buildings like a boiler house or other shaft houses. What was somewhat unexpected was just how ornate the stonework was. Many buildings had very decorative sandstone corner blocks. After walking around and checking the ruins out, we head back to camp for lunch before our afternoon tour.

Remnants of Old Mine Buildings

Ornate Stonework

The Quincy smelter tour is at a different location from the mine along the Portage Canal which provides water access to Lake Superior. This tour meets at a house just outside of the actual smelting plant. There are some displays and an informational video about how the smelting process works. We have a smaller group scheduled for this tour. After watching the video, we all pick out hard hats and walk down to the old plant.

Quincy Smelting Works

Smelting Plant

Tour Group

There are about a dozen large buildings on the property and we work our way around many of them. From the looks of things, this would have been a rather dirty job and there hasn’t been much of an attempt to make things too clean.

Ore Chutes

Old Furnace

We get to see some of the old furnaces and learn how the smelting process would remove the copper from the mined ore. Many of the spaces are rather dark with just minimal ambient light from some windows or a few lights. The tour almost had the feel like we had snuck into the old plant and were sneaking around.

Old Generator

This tour was only about an hour long but informative. If you only have the opportunity to take one tour, I would suggest the mine tour.

Old Safe

One part of the copper mining process that isn’t included in the National Park tour program is the stamp mill process. This step occurs in between the mining and smelting operations. Our tour guide had mentioned that the old stamping plant was about 5 miles east of the smelting plant but the building had fallen into disrepair well before the NPS took over the Quincy facilities. We thought it sounded like we should at least check it out since it wasn’t too far away. A couple cars were pulling out of the parking lot, so we know we aren’t the only people that explore here. Across the street is an old dredge that was somehow used in at the facility.

Derelict Dredge

The old buildings here are definitely in rough shape. As we wandered around, there were some places that just didn’t seem to be safe to venture into even though it was clear that others have done so. There is graffiti everywhere but there was one very creative work that caught my “eye”. Since all of the old equipment has been removed and we don’t have a tour guide to explain how the stamping mill worked, we were not much better informed about what took place here a century ago.

Lots of Graffiti Inside Old Mill

Mother Nature Starts to Reclaim

I Have an Eye on You

It was only around 4 PM so we still had some daylight left and energy to explore some more. When we pulled up our geocaching map, we saw there was one hidden just a few miles further northeast called Hungarian Falls. The pictures looked like this might be a nice place to check out so we take the short drive there. It looked like there are several sets of falls and a couple different options to get there. We drove up Golf course Road about a half mile to a trailhead along this dirt road. There were multiple cars here, so we suspected we were in the right place. As we were getting out of our car, another couple was walking by and we asked about how the falls were. They warned us that they had gone to the lower falls and headed down hill thinking they could cross back over the creek but had to go much further than they expected and then had to walk back up the hill. Hopefully we can learn from their mistake.

The trail was bigger than we expected and at least the first part looks like it is used by ATVs. When we heard the sound of falling water, we knew we were close to the falls. Turns out the first falls we spotted were from a manmade dam forming a small pond above it.

Manmade Dam

The trails along Dover Creek were in good shape although they are steep at points. We found the falls to be quite nice. We could see people on the opposite side but we were unsure how they got there - at least with dry feet. Since one family was walking in the water beneath the falls, we knew that was an option.

Falls

Atop Falls

We discovered that the geocache was on the opposite side of creek but after exploring a bit, we had found the log going across the creek. It had its top surface planed flat so it wasn’t simply a blow down that happened to span the water. After a quick test for its stability, we were able to make it across and find the nearby geocache. The larger falls looked more impressive from down at water level below it. We decided to not attempt to get to the lower levels of the creek since we had been warned. Plus it was getting late and we were hungry. It was a fun day in the Keweenaw.

Tree Bridge Over Creek

Below Falls

The next morning we had a storm roll through so we took it easy. By lunch it had passed and we could head out. This part of Michigan has a strong Finnish ancestry and Chris had read about a very popular food known as pannukakku. Hard to pronounce and hard to describe. It is a Finnish custard pancake baked in the oven and served with warm raspberry sauce. It sounded like one of the best places to try it was just across the canal in Houghton - Suomi Restaurant. When we arrive around noon, the place was definitely popular. There was a line of people waiting in the small entrance and out onto the sidewalk.

Surprisingly, it didn’t take too long before we were seated. We each ordered pannukakku and found it to be quite good. I can’t think of anything similar that I have tried before but I would definitely get it again if we have the chance.

Pannukakku

Our next stop was to Michigan Technological University to visit the AE Seaman Mineral Museum. Our mine tour guide had given this place a plug and we thought it sounded interesting. Outside the museum is a small flower garden and another example of float copper. But this isn’t like other samples we have seen. It’s probably 8 feet tall and 20 feet long and according to the sign, it weighs in at 19 tons! It even has its own covered pavilion.

Mineral Museum

19 Ton Piece of Copper

We have been to several mineral museums in our travels and this one is quite impressive. It is a very large building with multiple rooms all lines with display cases showing off some incredible specimens.

Sheet Copper

Petoskey Stone

Eye Agate

Some of the pieces look more like some very creative artist has designed a work of art. Obviously many of the items on display are from the area and are some form of copper.

Copper Chisel Fan

Ornate Copper

 Not all of the samples are as they were found in nature but have been cut and polished to show off some amazing colors and designs.

Azurite & Malachite from Bisbee AZ

Not all the samples are local. Many are from all around the world. We ended up spending a great deal of time walking around the museum and marveling at the wide variety of “rocks”. The fluorescent mineral exhibit was quite colorful. What look like rather nondescript rocks under room light change to vibrant colors under short or long wavelength light. This place was definitely worth the price of admission.

Amazing Colors

More Agates