Guess who was in town recently? If you’re thinking Capt. Paul and Dr. Nat, you’re absolutely correct! Also known as Paul and Nathalie Brandes, they’re sharing their visit to the Quincy Mine with us. Best part of that is Paul also supplies descriptions of the photos he sends. I’m sure he knows that I would have no clue what we were looking at otherwise.

So here we go with a Geologist giving us our tour today:

Photo #1 - No. 2 Shafthouse, built in 1908. Sits on top of the No. 2 shaft which extends 9,260 feet deep at a 54 degree angle.

Photo #2 - The stope near No. 5 shaft on the 7th level of the adit. This was dug by hand using drill steels and sledgehammers during the Civil War using only candles for light; the miners of the day never fully saw the work they had done excavating out this area.

Photo #3 - Native copper sticking out of the ceiling, proof they didn't remove all the copper out of the mine.

Photo #4 - Standing at the 250 feet mark inside the adit, looking towards the back. The adit was originally dug in 1894 and was only about 4 feet high and 3 feet wide. The tunnel was enlarged by Michigan Tech students in the 1970s to it's current size.

Amazing, simply amazing....all the way around!

It was a bad day in the mine when they encountered a large piece of native copper that had to be removed. It's hard to drill using their conventional tools and even harder to cut up using a saw. After drilling and filling the hole with explosive, very little would happen with the explosion since pure copper is very malleable.

I think I knew those 1970's MTU students.

Well, I'm glad Paul explained all that stuff
because it's way over my head. So thanks for
the pictures and sharing your knowledge of
this stuff. Greatly appreciated. Hopefully
you guys come back again next year.

Alexis is always interesting.