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Friday, January 07, 2022

The No. 2 Quincy Shaft-Rockhouse: 9,240 Feet into the Earth

For over 100 years, men ventured deep into mineshafts to reach the valuable copper deposits of Michigan's upper peninsula. The copper that passed through the Quincy Mining Company's candlelit No. 2 Shaft in the 19th century might have become a button on the uniform of a Civil War soldier, a wire for one of the first telephone poles, or part of the early electrical grid. Who produced this metal and how did they live? What was it like to work underground?

The workers who settled in the mining towns of “Copper Country,” the Keweenaw Peninsula on Lake Superior, came from a variety of different ethnic European backgrounds, including Italian, Finnish, Slavic, German, Irish, and Cornish. Mining companies attracted immigrants to this sparsely populated area with its company towns, where there were houses, hospitals, libraries, and schools ready to be filled. Conflicts over this paternalistic relationship and ethnic tensions reached a boiling point in 1913, when membership in the Western Federation of Miners union swelled. That year, the unionized miners went on a famous and deadly 8-month-long strike that changed mining and the very social fabric of Keweenaw forever.
-Kennymac
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6 comments:

  1. Fa Cube ItchesJanuary 7, 2022 at 1:32 AM

    "one of the first telephone poles"

    Who was Alexander Graham Dombrowski? The first telephone Pole.

    ReplyDelete
  2. AnonymousJanuary 7, 2022 at 3:15 AM

    Great article on the mine & town. I'm curious what the town looks like today?
    May have to do a "road trip" this summer! Places like that have so much character.
    What a melting pot! Thanks for posting it!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. PeterJanuary 7, 2022 at 7:53 AM

      There is an iron mine in northern MN that is a state park. Lake Vermillion - Soudan Underground Mine State Park. (https://www.dnr.state.mn.us/state_parks/lake_vermilion_soudan/tours.html). They have tours that take you 1/2 mile down the shaft.

      Delete
  3. AnonymousJanuary 7, 2022 at 9:33 AM

    More than that. It's over a mile down. I've been on the mine tour. There's a science tour of the big neutrino detector too. The tour had about 60 people ride down the skip hoist. It was crowded yet they said over 150 miners squeezed in it for the ride down to start their shift.

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  4. Brian EgoffJanuary 7, 2022 at 11:18 AM

    I worked 5300 feet down and it was hot and foggy from humidity. I've been down to 7200 feet and it was too hot for this gingie. They must have been chasing some really hi-grade shit to be down over 9000 feet.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Pigpen51January 7, 2022 at 8:05 PM

    My ex FIL was born in the area of Copper Harbor. I have been in that area a couple of times. It is beautiful, if you like nature, in all of it's wilderness.
    Prety much anything in the UP of Michigan is worth the trip. The fishing is great anywhere, and in the spring, the smelt run and you can net them, and depending on the year, you can get as many as you want.
    The last time I went, was probably over 30 years ago, but we brought back 60 gallons of smelt, and about 30 gallons of suckers. As a rule, when someone went up smelt dipping, they would drive around and share them with all of their friends.
    I went to a place called Marblehead Creek. Very close to Manistique.

    ReplyDelete

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