Day 2 of our big UP adventure began bright and early as we headed west towards the Keweenaw Peninsula. We started with a tour of the Cliffs Shaft Mine in Ishpeming. It really is a great facility, lovingly restored and outfitted with exhibits about mining–not just at Cliffs Shaft, but other nearby mines like Empire and Tilden. As a bonus, the local rock and mineral society has its exhibit there, too, featuring all kinds of artifacts mined in the area (in addition to those from elsewhere).
We got to go into the mine itself, led by a garrulous guide whom we have dubbed “He Who Should Stop Talking.” This is just the entry shaft that takes you to the cage area, where miners and equipment would come in and out. The shaft itself has been capped with two feet of cement, so really this area just resembled a large box more than anything else, but it was interesting to hear the history of it.
The mine was started in 1879, after some exploratory drilling, with two shafts. Back then, the town around it was called New Barnum. In 1919, the owners decided to replace (well, actually cover) the old wooden headframes over the shaft with something more attractive, and thus the distinctive Egyptian Revival concrete obelisks were created. They stand 96 feet tall (although one is a little shorter, having sunk into the ground somewhat). In the 1950s, C shaft was added in between the two original shafts. This one looks much more modern and much less artistic.
The whole mine was capped in 1967 once it became unprofitable, and the whole area was left to ruin. Then local citizens, including former miners, asked the Cleveland Cliffs mining company if they could have the property to renovate into a heritage museum. The museum now celebrates its 15th anniversary this year! More information about the museum may be found here.
We spent a bit longer at Cliffs Shaft than intended–we had lofty goals of getting to Calumet that night and seeing several ghost towns along the way, so we chose to bypass Greenwood (outside of Ispheming/Negaunee)–in particular because it didn’t look much like a ghost town–and head straight to the next on our list, which was Baltic.
Baltic, or what’s left of it, is about six miles southwest of Houghton on M-26. Our research shows that it was a mining town producing copper ore starting in the late 1800s. Unfortunately, by 1931, the mine had given up all that it could, and it was shut down. The town’s heyday was in the early 1900s, with a population recorded at 3,000 by 1918, and they had their own post office, general store, and physician.
We found some old mining buildings, as well as foundations hidden in brush.
Not too far down the road, headed towards Houghton, was Atlantic Mine (we marveled on this trip about how literal all the names of things are in the UP). This town still has residents, but bears a lot of the vestiges of earlier mining years. The first building we encountered was St. Mary’s Hall, built around 1885 and still used today. You can also see some sort of mining relics further back on the property.
The town itself was settled around 1865 and was a very functional, full town at its peak, with a saloon, an opera house, a butcher, and more. However, the mine was only ever modestly profitable, and the town started into decline in the 1930s.
We also got in our first cemetery of the trip, and it did not disappoint! What we hadn’t realized was how much our Upper Peninsula was populated by people from Finland, Sweden, Italy, and Cornwall (although we knew about the Cornish presence from the prevalence of pasties). The vast majority of the cemetery was Finnish, with some headstones actually inscribed in that language (we had to look up the words, most of which were words like “mother,” “father,” “husband,” and “wife,” as well as some scriptures). The cemetery had some newer interments, but many were older and ran in families.
On the way out of town, we also found the original post office and fire station. A couple of the original churches are also still in town.
While not a ghost town, per se, we did swing by the Quincy Mine ruins, north of Houghton/Hancock.
Our last adventure of the night before getting to our hotel in Calumet was finding the “town” of Boston (also called Boston-Demmon). This area is north of Houghton on M-41; you take Boston Road off of that to find it. According to our research (and it was hard to find very much), it was possibly a logging town. There is very little left there; just a few residents and a couple of ramshackle buildings.
There is a road sign to a town called Salo, although that apparently no longer exists due to a massive fire. We didn’t take the time to investigate if there were any remains; we did find one or two pictures online of a township hall.
The area’s big (literally) claim to fame is as the home to “Big Louie,” AKA Louis Moilanen, a young man who lived there and worked in the local mines. He grew to 8 feet four inches tall and weighed over 450 lbs. when he passed away at age 26. Apparently one of his suits is on display in Calumet.
At this point, we were quite exhausted from the day’s adventure and made our way to our hotel for the night. And as a highlight of our trip, we headed over to Gay, MI to have dinner at the Gay Bar.
Little did we know what would be in store for us the next day…
Travels with Abandon 