The past 19 years of archive photos here on the Pasty Cam haven't always been about beautiful scenery and people here in the U.P., sometimes the daily photos cover the history of the area. Like back in 2005, we featured a photo from 1898, during the Spanish war, when hundreds of Copper Country residents gathered at the Fourth Street Depot to speed the Calumet Light Guard, Company D on their way. Chuck Voelker and his outstanding historical work known as Copper Country Reflections supplied us with this historic moment in time.

Another notable moment in the history of the Keweenaw was featured on the Pasty Cam in 2016 and credited to the MTU Archives. It took us back to 1918, when the Quincy Mine Shaft was under construction. Quincy had contracted for delivery of a new hoist engine from Nordberg Manufacturing Co. in early 1917, to power the hoist to deeper depths in the mine. In the meantime a hoist house was designed and built and completed in 1918.

Our own Charlie Hopper was atop the Quincy Shaft a few years back, working on Pasty.Net Internet equipment housed there and made a video to share the view and a rare glimpse of the shaft surrounding him near the top. Unless you're afraid of heights, you'll enjoy another look at this Pasty Central gem.

If my memory is correct, wasn't the current No. 2 shafthouse constructed in 1908?

I don't know for sure Capt. Paul. I used Wikepedia for the info. Quincy
Mine Shaft.
Maybe 1918 was just the hoist house completion?

The shafhouse was built in 1908 after the previous wood shafthouse (a mirror image of #6) started to rot. Number 2 was an up-cast shaft where the mine "exhaled" with much moisture. The new or present shafthouse has a large vent at the very top. The present Nordberg hoist was ordered a few years before its actual construction, during WWI priorities with the government and Nordberg changed. As fate has it, we have an excellent preserved example of early 20th Century mining technology. But fate was not kind to the Quincy #2 shaft, the unwitting sins of the past caught up with it and with 20-20 hindsight we can see that the capital would have been better spent at #6.