I'm typing these words to the toe-tapping music of today's Painesdale Shaft video. Over the years our daily glimpse of life has included many landmarks like the ones above. Copper country ruins and relics that take us back to those years of booming communities all across the U.P. Towns built around iron and lumber, as well as copper. (Not so sure they had music like this back in those days :)

Joe Dase brought us the Centennial shot in 2003, and I'm not sure whether those structures are still standing. But the Champion No. 4 (which was a life's passion of the late Kevin Musser) has a whole bunch of people behind it, who invite others to join them in their preservation efforts at painesdalemineshaft.com

It has been a glorious week here in the Copper Country, with an extended color season, and days reaching up to the 70's. Hard to believe, tomorrow we'll be one month away from Thanksgiving!

Have a good week :o)

You are right, Charlie. It has been a glorious week in the Copper
Country, and I was so happy to be there last Friday to see it in
person. Beautiful here in the Ishpeming area too.

We closed up camp and head back home tomorrow. It's always hard
to leave the U.P.

As I earlier suspected, I was 2 weeks early this year for peak color. I think the warmer than normal Lake temperature caused the areas closer to the Lake to be delayed this year.

I visited the Centennial #6 area this year. There seemed to be a lot of modern day activity going on. The building next to the shaft and rock house had experienced some recent upkeep. Even though the public street runs right past it, things looked pretty private. Enough so that I didn't "snoop" around. I wonder what's going on there.

Two other great sources of info are:

MineDat
It's kind of hard to browse to anything specific but the search works well.

and a more local source of info is Mike Forgrave's:
Copper Country Explorer
His book "The Copper Empire Vol 1" provides great maps of all the mining relic areas.

By D. A. (Midwested) on Sunday, October 22, 2017 - 08:09 pm:

MineDat
It's kind of hard to browse to anything specific but the search works well.

It's actually called Mindat (Mineralogical Database) and is an international website that I have been a part of for years. Recently, I was made a Manager of the site, so if anyone needs help on there, let me know. Oh and BTW... the majority of the information on there for Michigan was entered by yours truly..... ;-)

Jazzy fly-over!

The picture of Centennial # 3 shaft which was also known as the Peanut Shaft. The shaft house and rick bin are gone. But the building right over the shaft still stands.