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Copper Country
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Copper Country is an area in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan in the United States, including most of Keweenaw, Houghton, Baraga and Ontonagon counties. The area is so named as copper mining was prevalent there from 1845 until the late 1960s. In its heyday, the area was the world's greatest producer of copper.
The Copper Country is highly unusual among copper-mining districts in that the copper was predominantly in the form of copper metal (native copper) rather than the copper oxides or copper sulphides that form the copper ore at almost every other copper-mining district. Native Ameicans mined copper from small pits as early as 3000 B.C.
The Michigan State Geologist Douglass Houghton (later to become mayor of Detroit) reported on the copper deposits in 1841. The first successful copper mine, the Cliff mine, began operations in 1845, and many others quickly followed. Mining of the most productive deposit, the Calumet conglomerate, began in 1865. Mining took place along a belt that stretched about 100 miles southwest to northeast.[1]
While mining continues on a small scale, tourism and logging are now the area's major industries. Popular tourist destinations include the cities of Copper Harbor and Houghton, and the Porcupine Mountains with Lake of the Clouds. Snowmobiling is very popular in the winter, and snowmobile trails are found in most areas.
The Copper Country is largely rural, and much of it has been designated as state parks or similar designations. These include McLain State Park, Porcupine Mountains State Park, and the Copper Country State Forest. The Keweenaw National Historical Park includes several important sites relating to the area's copper-mining history.
Institutions of higher education include Finlandia University in Hancock, founded in 1896 as Suomi College, and Michigan Technological University in Houghton, originally established in 1885 as the Michigan Mining School. Finlandia University is affiliated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, reflecting the spiritual heritage of the region's many Finnish immigrants. Michigan Tech was founded in response to the needs of the copper mines.
- ^ Walter S. White (1968) The native-copper deposits of northern Michigan, in Ore Deposits of the United States, 1933-1967, New York: American Institute of Mining Engineers, v.1, p.303-325
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