Quincy Mine has some fascinating places to explore, no matter what the weather. By the looks of Jason Jeannette's Quincy Mine album, he's found a number of them. Not being well versed in mining history, I'm going to have to rely on our visitors to fill us in on the what, where and when of this operation.

Reminds me of a roller coaster or one of those haunted house rides at the amusement parks! An interesting week as always here at the Pasty Cam... visited the Poor Farm, hiked up the canal, sat on the snowy beach, and built a snowman, only to finish it off with a ride on the rail!

I had a nice ride home from work this morning.The northern lights were out over the lake,a freighter was heading down and the lighthouse was adding it's special effect to the scene.It was worth the few minutes I took to soak it all in.
Have a nice day!I'm going to bed!

Mary
Just wanted to let you know youre doing a great
job with all the pics and insite to area there
Keep up the good work...

My guess is that it is where the cars went into the upper part of the stamp mill. The raw ore and rock were dumped into large bins and dropped down to the stamps where they were crushed and separated. The sand was then washed out into the lakes producing the sand banks that are still our legacy from the old days. Most of the copper went to be processed. Some larger and/or interestingly shaped pieces of copper went home in lunch pails. Folks who lived in Lake Linden and Hubbell used to have some fascinating pieces of copper as door stops or as curiosities in their china cabinets. I don't know anything about the Quincy company, but the stamp mill between Lake Linden and Hubbell had rails where entire train cars went in at the upper level to dump the copper from the mines. I'll be watching to see if the experts on Copper Country copper processing during it's heyday confirm or deny this guess.

The picture is taken directly behind the hoist house for the No.2 shaft. The cars are in a coal bunker for the hoist.

Seems like Troll forgot the camera ... sounds like a great pic. And also very familiar: everytime I come across something that would make a great one - well, guess;)

Its the Number 2 Boiler House, the upper level rail was to dump coal from the side dump rail cars into bins, at the bottom level the coal was fed into furnaces, through man power if I remember right, the steam was used to power the number 2 Hoist.

PBrumm and Joe Dase are correct. My son works as a tour guide at the Hoist. I will see if he would be willing to comment on this.

Sure looks dark this morning on the bridge cam...

Yeah it sure does. Still dark there at 11:40 am. any comment Charlie? ;-)

Hi dick, is it hot in fl.

The Bridge Cam is back up now. We had a power outage last
night across the entire Upper Peninsula. I forgot to reboot
the computer that makes the camera work. Everything is
working fine now.

J.H.Kulpers...I think many miners took home silver in their lunch pails as well as copper...The Company laid claim to the silver found in the mines but many miners considered it sort of a "fringe benefit". I was told that silver-buyers made regular stops to the back rooms of some local jewlery stores to buy silver from the men

Mary Lou -
Very interesting, the story about the silver. Wonder how much there actually was and what grade it was. Are there items for sale that claim to be made of UP silver? I seem to remember that there's gold jewelry with that honor.

Thanks, Jason, for bringing me back home for a few minutes. I'm here in Ohio going to college and worked at the QM as a tour guide for 5 summers. I miss those historic sites. Also, Jason, I think you are friends with Susie (Kali), one of my friends...just a little connection. Beautiful pictures in your gallery...thanks!

Julie Barrie from mich now Netherlands,

I thank you for the very kind words! :->

Actually, the boilerhouse was numbered "5", although it did serve the hoists for shaft #2. Boilerhouse #2 was behind the Quincy-Franklin Fire house. Also, Joe Dase, they didn't use the side-dumps for coal. They used the same bottom dump rock cars that hauled the rock to Mason. Word is that a grant is on it's way to replace the roof on the boilerhouse and to stabilize the walls of the roundhouse.

Curious former Yooper.... I am guessing that it must have been a considerable amount..it went on for years and there apparently was a regular system set up for the sale of silver. I do not know anything about it's grade, however. I understand the copper is extremely pure "with a high silver content"(whatever that means)....maybe a metallurgist out there can give you more information.

Somethings not right with the bridge cam!

Bridge cam looks as though its lens is fogged up, wonder if it has a heating element in the enclosure that has malfunctioned. Great pict. of the carts, reminds me of one we found as kids just outside of calumet, we put it on the abandoned tracks and would push it uphill just to ride it down the tracks, just past the train tressel that use to go over the road to sweetown, there are two drainage ponds, opposite of each other, at the bottem of one of thoses ponds resides that old cart because as kids we grew tired of it and thought it would be neat to watch it slide down the steep rock slope into the pond. It is probably still there to this day as that was way back in 1970.

What I have read about the silver content is that yes there was some, and yes miners would take what they found home with them, but that was few and far between as if the opposite were true they would be mining it today. Instead of being called the copper country it would be the silver country, it sounds better as the copper country and that is what it is. As far as the grade I do not know.

As kids back in the 40s, my brother and I, and neighbor kids would play, explore, and crawl around that building pictured. I remember clearly standing right at the back of that car and the ledge on the opening in that wall! We lived 2 houses from the big powerhouse! The house is no longer there but I think the neighboring house still is. It was featured on a page here about a year or two ago anyhow(?) From what I remember seeing, (everything was in better condition and more complete then) and from what the "oldtimers" told us then, was that those cars brought in coal, dumped it down the slides to the bins about 1 or 2 storys below. As I remember the cars were side dumpers. I have Lots of memorys from those days, exploring all around in the big steam powerhouse then. There were miners/workers hats, rubber coats, lunchpails etc.left still hanging on hooks, shelfs in a lower level I assume was a locker room of some sort. As kids we were too scared to go in the mineshaft house! Back then most of the cable trestle towers were still standing. There were many fenced off "cavein" holes all over the neighborhood. We would lean over the flimsy fences and drop rocks down the hole and listen as they bounced downward what seemed an endless time till we couldn't hear them
anymore. There were several concrete ponds across the road up towards US41 behind the old Franklin Mine that had dozens upon dozens of big healthy frogs in them all the time. Gee, I could go on and on about this! Haven't been up there in years but I know there are many changes to the whole area. I hope they do restore that old building! I should check my shoebox for old photos!

I was just at this spot the end of October showing the sights to my 3 year old son. My grandmother grew up in a house next to the one that is still there by the hoist. I have been through many of the buildings that still stand before they were boarded up or screened off. Does anyone remember that there was an engine in the roundhouse until maybe 15 years ago? Seem to remember hearing that it went to the Smithsonian.

In regard to silver and copper. The old rumors said that miners could sell a "Bull Durham" bag of silver chiseled from the exposed metal for $5. and that was when $5 was more than a days pay.

As far as the importance of silver with the copper, a book entitled "Silver Bearing Copper" was compiled by Walter Finlay, Director of Research of Copper Range in 1968 (Library of Congress 68-55289). It quotes Dr. Parker,Prof of Metallurgy at USC Berkley as saying "Only one atom of silver to 5,000 atoms of copper can produce a great change in properties of the metal." It was always known that there was a brand of copper listed as "Lake Copper" that commanded a higher price because of its high conductivity and strength. The Findlay Book points out that mining of copper in the UP was going on in 5555 BC based on carbon dating of the charcoal in some of the ancient mining pits. The author also tends to feel that many of the ancient tools such as spear points and knives made from copper were possible because of the slight silver content. Finlay says, "The ease of working and heat treating silver-bearing copper, and the superior properties thereby obtained, were advantages many thousands of years ago, and are even more so today."

Copper Range researchers, in 1965-68, went to great lengths to produce six special test batches (2,700 lbs) of copper with controlled silver contents varying from 0.6 oz/ton to 25.0 oz/ton. Extensive tests for strength, ductility, hardness, etc were run on specimens from these batches. The book contains many graphs and presentations of the results of the tests along with comments and conclusions.

Bob Brown, Alabama......Thank you for the information!!!....I think the information regarding ancient miners is fantastic and even more interesting than the period of time we generally think of as Copper-Country mining history-(nineteenth & twentieth century).. imagine mining 7500 yrs ago (5555 BC) in the Copper Country...how did these prehistoric miners manage to transport their loads in canoes....are the storage pits in Wisconsin related. did they identify Copper Country (lake copper) copper in them??? Is Dr. Findlay's book available?? Thank you!!

The Silver mostly came from the mines further up the Peninsula (The Phoenix, Central, Cliff) and was of EXCEPTIONAL quality. Copper Falls also yielded some great Silver nuggets and nodules, especially the Owl Creek fissure.

It was 'native', and pure like the copper

I watched a program from the BBC here the other day and they were talking about the miners from long ago... and they said that....since the miners got up so early in the mornings if they were going to work and passed a woman or saw a woman in the morning it was considerd bad luck..they were very supersitious...

I once knew an old miner that collected and bought
silver nuggets from other miners. He had 2 nail
kegs full of silver nuggets. He sold most of them
when the Hunt Brothers ran up the price of silver.
He called them "Breeds" because some were combined
copper & silver. He also said if the the mine cops came to their houses checking on silver the
miners would drop them down the privy out back.
He claimed there are still " Glory Holes" near the
old mine houses. The nuggets I saw were very pure
but not very big - maybe a 1/2" or so.