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Weekend Tours of Cliff Mine Start Saturday Industrial
archaeology faculty and students invite the public to
view their work at the first commercially successful
copper mine in the Upper Peninsula.
Tours of the Cliff Mine ruins and the nearby town of
Clifton will be held on Saturdays and Sundays in June,
starting June 11. Tours start approximately on the hour
beginning at 10 a.m., leaving from roadside signs near
the parking area at the northeastern end of Cliff Drive,
near Phoenix. Tours will continue all day until about 4
p.m., weather permitting. Visitors are advised to wear
clothing appropriate for hiking, boots or sneakers,
carry water and be prepared for the weather. The site is
not improved and has no toilets.
The Cliff Mine, the Copper County's first profitable
copper mine, opened in 1845 and mined "native" copper
until the 1870s. After mapping the site last year,
faculty and students from the Department of Social
Sciences are now conducting excavations in one of the
mine's stamp mill buildings. The research teams
discovered substantial remains of the building,
including floors, stairs and machine footings, that
allow them to reconstruct daily life for workers at the
mill.
Faculty members Timothy Scarlett and Sam Sweitz lead
the field teams, and PhD student Sean Gohman is the
project archaeologist.
The Cliff Mine was owned and operated by the
Pittsburgh & Boston Mining Company. Discovered in 1845,
the Cliff Vein produced over 38 million pounds of
refined copper over a 40-year period and paid dividends
to its investors totaling $2.5 million.
From 1846 to 1858, no other copper mine in the region
could match the production of the Cliff Mine. After the
Civil War, however, as miners followed the vein as it
dipped 1,000 feet underneath the basalt Cliff face, the
depth made the operation increasingly difficult. By
1870, the company decided the mine, though still
producing, was not worth further investment, and sold it
for $100,000.
Activity at the Cliff continued for the next 60-plus
years under various managements, but it never regained
its earlier success. In the 1920s and '30s, the new
owners of the Cliff, the Calumet & Hecla Mining Company,
were still hoping a new vein would be uncovered and
drilled dozens of holes throughout the property. Nothing
of promise was found, and by the 1950s all interest in
the Cliff as a producing mine ended.
To learn more about the excavations, visit the Cliff
Mine blog site. |
