• Sunday-What'sUP February 10 - 09:34 am

Recently there was news of the Quincy Smelting Works site at Hancock being purchased by the Keweenaw National Historic Park advisory commission. Bill Haller ran across these Shoebox Memories of the smelting process in the Copper Country... only, it's not just copper that has a history of being mined and refined here... it's also SILVER.

The top photo is from the Koepel and Foster Collections of the Park Service. Here is even a higher resolution shot, showing the detail of this process of making "cakes" of the metal. And if the 55 bars of silver in the third photo was worth $40,000 back in the day, I wonder what the price tag would currently be?

Hard to believe it will be the middle of February already this week. We are winding our way to the conclusion of 16 years of daily photos here on the Pasty Cam. Seeing new old pictures like these makes me tend to believe there is still more to explore in the history, beauty, and culture of the U.P... at least for another year.

Have a Happy Valentines Day - and a good week :o)

Absolutely fascinating; thanks!

Probably at least for another century, Charlie!

I understand that many people weren't aware that silver was mined in the Copper Country as well as copper. My father told me about something that went on when he was a young man (approx. 1900). Men who worked in the mills would see silver pieces going by on conveyers and pick them off. They would carry them home in "Bull Durham" bags or lunch pails. The company didn't like it but because the company was chartered to mine copper only they couldn't file charges against the men because to do so would force them to confess they weren't paying taxes on the silver. My Dad and a jeweler friend from Hancock, on Sunday, would weigh and buy silver from the workers. Dad said that sometimes the waiting line was a block long.

That's interesting, and a little funny info, Richard.;}

Finding native silver in the mine or mill was a good way to supplement your income back in the boom days. There also was some level of silver in the native copper mined. Because of the silver content, "Lake" copper was branded and often accepted as superior to common copper thus commanding a price premium. There are recorded cases where "Lake" copper was specified in manufacturing specs. This ended during the 1908-09 hostile takeover of the Osceola and Tamarack properties by C&H. The Bigelow interests tried to block C&H on anti-trust issues but, C&H countered that there was no essential difference between "Lake" copper and western electrolytic copper. Something they later may have regretted.
The rarest occurrence of native silver in the mines are the "half-breeds" where native silver and native copper are deposited adjacent to each other. We once found a very large "half-breed" at the Phoenix mill along Eagle River.
Also, my Grandfather "dipped" copper in the C&H smelter as a young man.

Interesting topic, Charlie. Thanks!

Just shows the dishonesty on the company's part
caused them those ramifications. The saying
"honesty is the best policy" comes to mind.

i estimated the silver to be 12"x4"x4" converted to
cubic centimeters, used the density of 9g/cc to
calculate the mass of one block at 28kg (about 60
pounds!!!). Then using the current price of silver
this calculates out to about $18,000 per block.
There are 54 blocks in the picture making the
entire silver collect roughly $970,000 !! Let the
UP silver mining begin!!

Not sure the 1908-09 issue was an honesty v. dishonesty case. C&H needed to expand its territory in the Copper Country, and adjacent to the Calumet Conglomerate in particular for its future. The Bigelow, Clarke, & Lewisohn group had profitable properties and resented C&H's stock purchases. Bigelow et al sued, claiming C&H was trying to monopolize the "Lake" copper trade. C&H countered there was no real functional difference between the two coppers and that they just did a better job of refining. The regret came in later years when the slight price premium would have helped the bottom line for all the "Lake" producers. There is always a danger in using present mores, practices, and standards to judge what folks did in the past, they operated in their world and would find ours as alien as we find theirs.