Saturday July 24

We decided we wanted to tour the Quincy copper mine back in Hancock, one of the towns we came through to to get to Copper Harbor, so Saturday morning we went down to a Hancock city park, to tour one of the areas great copper mines. This was restored by a co-operative effort of a local group of towns people and the National Park Service. We went on a ranger led tour of the above ground ruins and facilities that have been restored.
Copper is found in this area in deposits called "floats" that are simply areas where copper has been gathered together, back in time, under ground and due to changes in heat and pressure gets forced through holes in rock. These floats are essentially pure copper, but can not be mined! Because copper is so ductile, they need to have it mixed in with other rock so that it can be broken off and hauled out. This results in mountains of tailings. There were an number of interesitng buildings in process of being restored, including the original hoist. This enormous device was used to transport men down to the mine, and copper out. Imagine the drum you see here wrapped with miles of cable. The mine had dozens of levels, and the operator controlled it all from a small station above and behind this drum The drum was operated by steam. The cable was connected over towers to cars in the mine shaft. The shaft went into the ground at the same angle as the roof line in the photo, left. Next we went on a mine tour. We donned coats and hardhats and climbed in a cog rail car and went down a very steep slope to the bottom, just before the bridge in the photo, right. We transferred to a trolley that took us into the mine. There a gujide took us around and showed us how miners used to come down with a candle for illumination, and in small groups of two or three, would drill, blast, and haul out rock that contained a relatively small percent of copper ore. The chart you see is the map for all of the veins that Quincy was mining. The mine was very wet and reasonably cold, about 40 F. We were told that prior to the hoist, the miners would have to descend into the mine each day on ladders - and after working 12 hr shifts climb back out on ladders. Surprisingly in the 40 or more years Qunicy mined this shaft only about 250 miners lost their lives.