More Keweenaw

Saturday, September 26, 2015

We decided to stay an extra day here to go up to Copper Harbor and Brockway Mountain.  Though foggy this morning, it became sunny and warmed into the 70s.  Great weather!

Our drive to Copper Harbor was up Hwy 41, about 50 beautiful miles.  In Copper Harbor is Fort Wilkins and Copper Harbor Lighthouse.  Not much has changed around here since our first visit 45 years ago.  They have updated the displays at the fort, but the buildings are the same.

Fort Wilkins was a policing post, not a military fort.  It was built to keep the peace between miners and the Chippewa and Ojibwa, though no problems ever occurred.  The fort opened in 1843, but over the next two years the soldiers were relocated to Texas to fight in the Mexican War.  For a period, it was rented as a health resort, then reopened in 1867, after the Civil War, and closed permanently in 1870.  So as forts go, this one had little use and saw no fighting.

Typical military, they had procedures and regulations for everything.  It appears they wrote regulations constantly with all the time on their hands. Their 6 months of winter probably helped support this as well.

We have been to the Copper Harbor Lighthouse at least twice before.  It requires a boat ride to get there. We opted not to go, as the price is now $17 each and is the exact same design as the Ontonagon Light that we saw earlier this week.  The light is still active.  The lamp is a beacon, constant white, differentiating it from Eagle Harbor.  The lighthouse went into service in 1847.  It originally had a 4th order Fresnel lens.  It was automated in 1919, deactivated in 1933 when the skeleton tower light was erected.  The light was moved to the tower In 1933.  The lighthouse was given to Michigan for a state park in 1974.

On the way home we drove Brockway Mountain Drive.  The best view is going north (towards Copper Harbor) but it was too foggy on our morning trip up.  This roadway was built in 1933 with Depression era funds.  It is about 8 miles long and follows the ridge of Brockway Mountain rising 720 feet above Lake Superior.  The road was rougher than we remembered, although portions have been repaved.  Today there were bikes, ATVs, hikers, and much more traffic than we remembered; guess that’s progress.

Overlooking Copper Harbor.  The Lighthouse is a speck on the long piece of land at about 9 o’clock.  The body of water to the right is Lake Fanny Hooe.

Lake Superior, about 5 miles away.

As you see in these pictures, the fall colors are just starting.  They are usually pretty well along by now, which we were counting on.  Bummer!

That’s about it for today, we head for Marquette tomorrow.

Keweenaw

Friday, September 25, 2015

We used the term Keweenaw Peninsula in yesterday’s post.  Realizing some may not be familiar with that name, or the origin of the name Keweenaw, we thought it would be good to start this post with that tid-bit. While we knew the name for this peninsula, we did not know the actual origin of the name.  There is no town here called Keweenaw, so where did the name come from?  The name was handed down by the Chippewa(Ojibwa) meaning “portage” and refers to the Portage Lake and canal that cuts across the peninsula.

We wanted to go back to Calumet, but first a little drive up the road to Eagle Harbor where a lighthouse and museum are located.  Eagle Harbor is important to shipping because it is, or was, a harbor and it has numerous nasty reefs and shoals along the coast here.  Coming from Duluth and Superior, ships come within a few miles of the Keweenaw on their course to the Soo.  Get too close, as many ship discovered and they will ground.  Getting in here is also tricky, requiring range lights to get lined up.

So in 1871 they built a lighthouse here.  It is still an active Coast Guard light with alternating red and white pattern.  The light uses a high intensity beacon style light.  In the old days it was a 4th order Fresnel, wick style lamp.  Here is a picture.

What was interesting was the story of the two shipwrecks they had here.  The first, in October 1910, the William C. Moreland.  Carrying 12,000 tons of iron ore from Duluth on only her 5th voyage, the Moreland lost visibility due to forest fires going on here. It went off course and grounded on what they call Sawtooth Shoal.  Several unsuccessful attempts were made to free her, but the bow was on one “tooth” and stern on another.  A big storm hit 2 days later.  The wave action cracked her hull.  A second storm opened another crack.  It was deemed a loss.  Now the interesting part. 

The following spring, a salvage operator from Sarnia, cut off the back 278 feet of stern.  The engine and running gear were undamaged and like new.  The salvage process is a story onto itself.  Anyway, the stern managed to find its way to Ecorse (South Detroit River) where it had a 300 foot bow section welded onto it.  Really!  It then sailed under 5 other names, finally ending up in Spain where it was scrapped in 1970; 60 years later. 

The original bow section still sits off the Eagle Harbor coast. A favorite dive objective around here.

The second was the City of Bangor.  She was carrying a load of Chryslers to Duluth in November 1926.  She hit one of the rock shoals, ripped open the hull and doused the boilers.  The 22 aboard got to shore, but almost froze in the cold and snow before being rescued.  The ship was encased in ice and also a total loss.  In February, when the lake froze over, they built a ramp and drove off all but 18 of those Chryslers.  The 18 were on deck and got knocked into the water in the collision.  They drove them across the ice to Copper Harbor, where in the spring, they were returned to Detroit by rail.  A few of them were snagged by locals here.  We’re not sure if they bought them.

A little Michigan Maritime Lore!

From here we returned to Calumet.  They have a really neat, old, turn of the century theater.  In fact, on Thursday night, they had the Molley Hatchett band. Definitely not our cup of tea.  Over the years they have had big name, live entertainment here.  When the population in 1910 was 100,000 plus, it was easy to see, but today?

        

The theatre is said to be acoustically perfect.

We next went in search of remnants of other mines.  We found this Hoist House for the Hecle Mine.  Pretty crusty.

 

This next picture shows how many mine shafts there were for the C&H Mine.

These things were lined up shoulder to shoulder.  I must have been a noisy, smelly environment.  A far cry from what we have today.

Wanna see a really big piece of copper?  How about 17 tons? Yes, that is all one piece of copper; no rock attached.  They found this one off the shore between Eagle River and Eagle Harbor.

 

It holds the Guinness record as the largest piece of native copper in the world.  At 17 tons that little nugget is worth about $100,000’

That pretty much wraps up today.

Copper Country

Wednesday, September 23, 2015

We contemplated an extension of our stay in Ontonagon because there were a few more things to check out, but there was a threat of rain later in the day, as well as for tomorrow.  Breaking camp and moving in the rain is not a favorite thing to do, so we left today as originally scheduled.

After a short 60 mile drive we arrived in Hancock.  Road construction has been a pain.  Into Duluth our 20 minute commute from the campground was 45 minutes down Hwy 53.  Now, we get to Houghton and they’re working on  the bridge between Houghton and Hancock.  Grr…. another detour.  Glad we are staying in Hancock, as most of what we want to see is on this side of Portage Lake.

So we are now in the Hancock City Campground.  Nice little campground, just wish we had a water hook-up, so we wouldn’t need to worry about water use. 

Thursday, September 24, 2015

Cloudy, cool, and sprinkling a little as we got up this morning.  First on the agenda is a visit to the Quincy Mine.  We have not been here for at least 20 years.  Wow, the National Park Service has taken over many of the historic sites around here and really fixed up the facilities.  So a little history of this area.

As stated in an earlier post, the copper here is found in elemental, native form, not as an ore.  It’s the pure stuff and there were really large veins of it.  The Ojibwa were the first to mine it.  Did you know the western half of the UP was bought from the Ojibwa by the Federal Government, then given to Michigan in trade for the Toledo corridor that went to Ohio?

In the 1840s there was a major copper rush in the Keweenaw Peninsula,  the hunk of land sticking out into Lake Superior.  It proceeded the California and Alaska Gold Rush by several years.  A large number of mining companies set camp here.  Quincy was one of them  They mined the Pewabic lode.  In 1863 through 1867 it was the largest producing mine in the the US.  It’s name came from the city of it’s investor, Quincy, Massachusetts.  Another huge mine in the area was Calumet and Heclia. more on C&H later.

Quincy operated until 1929.  The Great Depression reduced copper prices and all the mines here closed as a result.  The Quincy mine went down 9250 feet,   They attempted to reopen for the WWII effort and need for copper, but it had slowly filled with water to the 7th level. (there were a total of 92 levels).  They did some mining then, but closed when the government contracts expired.  Between 1856 and 1929 it produced 726 million pounds of copper.  The mine was profitable and paid dividends for 53 years.  Some pictures of the place follow.

This is the signature structure of the Quincy ruins.  This hoist house is visible for miles around here.

This is the Nordberg steam hoist drum.  It operated two cables, one winding on, one winding off.  It was smaller at the edge to improve torque multiplication on start. This permitted them to operated two skiff cars, doubling production.  It took 5 minutes to cover the distance.  It was powered by a Nordberg triple expansion steam engine.  Coal was the fuel.

This is the engine house housing the drum.

This is the rope cable used; over 19,000 feet of it.

We drove up the road 10 miles to Calumet.  This was a semi-ghost town last time we came up here.  The National Park stepped in to make Calumet and surrounding area a historic site.

In Calumet we visited a museum that told the copper rush story, with the focus on the Calumet and Heclia Mining Company.  It is housed in the Union Building, built in 1889.  The town of Calumet and several surrounding towns were built and owned by the C&H Mining Company.  During its heyday in 1906, C&H produced 100 million pounds of copper per year.  It closed in 1921.

We thought the museum was excellent.  They kicked us out at closing.  Tomorrow we plan to go back to Calumet and explore a little to see if any bits of the C&H Mine are still around..  There is also a 1900s theater that is open for tours.  The whole town has a historic district with old buildings that have been restored and repurposed. 

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Ontonagon

Tuesday, September 22, 2015

We ended up spending most of the day in their museum and touring the lighthouse.  Chatting with the museum curator and our lighthouse guide was so engaging, we just couldn’t leave.  So some interesting stuff about Ontonagon.  It’s initial claim to fame was a huge copper nugget, which currently resides in the Smithsonian in Washington DC,  weighs 3078 pounds and is over 3 x 3 feet in size.

The copper found in the UP was elemental copper, not ore, which is why copper mining took off in this area.  Problem was, it’s a stinker to get it to a place of transport.  Many of the mines went broke because although they could find it, they couldn’t get it to a road, river   lake, or railroad.  The terrain here is that rugged.

There is still copper in this region and mining companies know where it is. They will go after it if the price goes up.  Along some veins, the copper also contains silver.

The White Pine Mine was last to operate here employing about 800 people.   It closed in 1995.  Logging was also big and some logging continues today.  They had a paper mill here, employing 200, but it closed in 2009.  So 1000 jobs have been lost.  Population here in 1990 was over 6000, now its barely over 1500.  We were told it’s a nice place to live, but bring your own money.

Our 1 hour lighthouse tour lasted for nearly 3 hours and it was just the two of us on the tour!  The lighthouse was built at the opening of the Ontonagon River in 1899 to assist shipping from the White Pine Mine.  They had a problem with Superior building a sandbar at the entrance so they built a jetty.  The sandbar went away, but it then built up along the west jetty.  They have extended the jetty 3 times and as a result, the lighthouse is now back from the lake a 1/2 mile.  So it was decommissioned in 1963.  It was never electrified and used a mantle light burning kerosene (kind of like a Coleman lantern). The light was a steady white, no rotation.  It had a 5th order Fresnel, but the lens has been moved to the safer museum location.

^{This is the mantle lantern.  The whole assembly would have set inside the Fresnel lens.}

Our guide told us many interesting stories about several of the nine lighthouse keepers. There was only one keeper and his job went 24/7.  He was only allowed “cat naps” of 1 hour while on duty whenever the river was clear of ice.  One of the keepers was required to stand at the river entrance with a portable fog horn in foggy weather if the seaman could not see the light.  One time the keeper was out there for 72 hours.

Over the years the channel was maintained to about 25 feet deep.  Freighters used the channel mostly to off load coal.  A very interesting day.   

The sunsets around here are awesome.

Back in Michigan

Sunday, September 20th

Got an early start from Duluth today as we have a 200 mile journey ahead of us.  The weather has been great and makes the trip much easier.  Most of it is on US 2; mostly a 2 lane road.  Our destination is Ontonagon.  I bet that’s a town some have not heard of.  So why are we going there?  Porcupine Mountains Wilderness State Park.

We last visited the park 45 years ago, on our honeymoon.  We are planning our visit there tomorrow, so more about it then.  Ontonagon derives its name from the river of the same name, the largest that flows into the south shore of Lake Superior.  The origin of the name is Ojibwa meaning “river of the lost bowl” and later corrupted into French, then English.  It has a population just under 1500.  Ontonagon County is 3rd lowest in population and 3rd highest in area in Michigan, giving it a population density of 6 people per square mile.  So if you are looking for a place that is out of the way and off the beaten track, this is it.

Monday, September 21, 2015

As we said, Porcupine Wilderness State Park is our main reason for being here.  The Porcupine mountains are almost entirely in the park. The Lake of the Clouds is the main feature of the park; here are a couple pictures.

There a few more feature we were interested in.  The first is the Presque Isle River area in the west area of the park with its waterfalls.

 

The next is the highest point in the park and nearly the highest elevation in Michigan; Summit Peak, 1958 feet.  The highest is Mount Arvon at 1979 feet in L’Anse.

However, one could make the argument we were above that because we climbed a 200 ft observation tower, from which this picture was taken.  The leaves are just starting to turn here.  In full color this view would be pretty awesome.  Getting up here…. 226 steps.

This park has not been nice to us.  First, the shower house and toilets are being renovated in the campground so they brought in porta johns.  The semi truck trailer ones you see at car races.  Euchh!  We are staying in Ontonagon at a city park.  Actually quite nice, but a 15 mile commute to the park.

The road connecting east to west in the park was closed, so there’s a detour of 55 miles to get to the falls and Summit Peak.  And finally, a trail to the falls was closed for boardwalk repair, requiring an extra mile of hiking to get to them.

The Porcupines are pretty spectacular and the park is worth the visit.  We just did not see and do everything we wanted, due to all the extra time wasted.  Guess we picked the wrong time to visit.

Tomorrow (actually today as we write this) we are going to hang around Ontonagon as the weather is deteriorating.  Rain is predicted.

Another Day in Duluth

Friday, September 18, 2015

It was cloudy and cool but no rain this morning.  We have three points of interest to visit today so we had better get started.

Our first stop was at the Depot.  This is a restored railroad depot from the early 1900s.  It contains not only a really great railroad museum, but also a historical museum and art gallery.  Entering the railroad museum is like stepping back a 100 years.  The layout contained a nice collection of rolling stock, but there were offices and stores fashioned to look like the early 1900s.  Dan liked the trains; Lynn liked the surrounding store & office fronts.  They let you climb around the trains which was nice.  Within some of the cars were history of the railroads in Duluth.

The history area told about the economic boom driven by lumber and iron ore.  The railroad played a key role in this boom. As more track was laid, it opened up new areas of development. When the railroad reached the Vermillion mountains, Duluth really expanded.  There was an area in the Depot called an immigrant waiting area. Much of the population growth came from people immigrating from Ireland, Finland, Sweden, Germany, and Poland to work in the mines and logging camps.  It was amazing the determination these people had.  The two or three months it took them to get here, many with no money, only the clothes on their back, traveling in extremely crowded and unsanitary conditions.  Waiting days in lines to be processed. Wow, look what we take for granted!

This thing is a snow blower for the railroad tracks!  I bet it can move some serious snow.

Next stop, the freighter SS William A. Irvin. It was first in service in 1938, under the US Steel flag.  It was named after the president of US Steel at the time. It’s 610 ft long, carried 14,000 tons, with a top speed of 11 MPH.  Propulsion was twin, steam turbines spinning a single wheel.  Personnel consisted of 32 crew and 9 officers.  By 1978 it was obsolete and retired. 

What made this ship interesting were the guest quarters, located in the forward area of the ship.  They were reserved for execs from US Steel.  Often, Irwin and his wife would also travel aboard.  Everything from sleeping quarters, bathroom, lounges, and service was on par with the nicest cruise ship.

Our final stop was a harbor cruise.  We traveled under the lift bridge, out into the lake, then back. Then around the harbor to see some of the loading areas for big ships. 

A couple of grain loading docks.

Saturday, September 19, 2015

Today we traveled to Superior, Wisconsin.  Actually it’s just across a bridge over the St. Louis River.  A few things there had our interest.  The first was the Old Firehouse & Police Museum.  It is housed in an 1898 fire hall used by Superior until 1982.  Inside was some cool antique equipment.

This horse drawn, steam driven pumper is not original to Superior, but included it here because they are very rare.

Old time firebox.  The panel below was the network of connections; the firemen could tell which box was alerted for a fire and would know where to respond.

Next was the SS Meteor, a whaleback freighter, the last of its kind in the world.  Originally there were several hundred of these things built during a period from about 1890 to 1910.  This one was built in 1896 and remained in service until 1972.  The Meteor was hull #136.  All have sunk or have been scrapped.   

Their name is derived from their shape.  Actually its more cigar shaped, but in the water it looked like a whale.  Very different design than today.  They were all in the 350 to 400 foot range; the Meteor is 380 ft long with a beam of 48 feet.  Their design advantage was large cargo capacity and shallow draft.  But they had some disadvantages.  They had a habit of rolling over in bad seas.  Loaded, the freeboard was so low, the deck could not be seen from a distance and they got run over by other ships.  They were slow and consumed fuel, coal, at a rate 4x conventional ships of their size and capacity.  Amazingly though, the Meteor went through 3 refits and continued in service twice as long as the Irwin; 76 years versus 40 years.

The picture isn’t great here, but these models show the hull shape of the whaleback design.

This shot is looking forward down the deck.  Note, there are no hatch covers.  The Meteor’s third re-fit turned it into an oil tanker.  In fact they have a bit of a problem, there is still some oil in her nooks and crannies they can’t get out and its leaking into the sand pile its sitting in.

Last stop was to see a lighthouse at the Superior Entry.  This entry leads to the same harbor as the Duluth entry.  Not sure how many ships come in here.  It certainly is closer to the ore docks, but it may not be dredged, so it may not have enough depth.

This is our last day in Duluth.  We have enjoyed our stay here, and believe it or not, we did not do everything there is to do around here.  But, as many of you know, we get the itch to move on after 4 or 5 days.  So tomorrow we are off to Ontonagon in the Porcupine Mountains, back into Michigan.