The Copper Range Company was a major copper-mining company in the Copper Country of Michigan, United States. It began as the Copper Range Company in the late 19th century as a holding company specializing in shares in the copper mines south of Houghton, Michigan. The company was bought by Louisiana Land and Exploration in 1977.
Copper Range controlled through share ownership the Copper Range Railroad and the Baltic Mining Company. The Copper Range Railroad served much of the southern part of the Copper Country, and the Baltic Mining Company owned the copper mine at Baltic, Michigan. [1]
In 1901, the Copper Range Company, prevented by Michigan law from issuing more shares of stock, incorporated a new entity in New Jersey, the Copper Range Consolidated Company. Copper Range Consolidated used its new shares to get control of more copper mining companies by stock swaps. It gained half the stock in the Champion mine. The company swapped shares to acquire nearly all the shares of the Trimountain mine, which had been misrun by its principals, Thomas W. Lawson and Albert C. Burrage. Copper Range came to own nearly all the copper mines south of Portage Lake, just as the Calumet and Hecla Mining Company owned nearly all the mines north of Portage Lake. [2]
The Copper Range properties mined copper in the form of native copper in stratiform orebodies in the flow tops of Precambrian basalt lava flows. The ore horizons are known locally as amygdaloids, after the amygdaloidal-shaped gas bubbles in the lavas that filled with minerals.
Copper Range shut down the Champion mine, its last operating native copper property, in 1967.
Copper Range spun off its wholly owned subsidiary White Pine Copper Co., which in 1955 opened the White Pine mine at the south end of the copper belt, at White Pine, Michigan, Ontonagon County. The White Pine mine contained a large stratiform body of chalcocite-impregnated siltstone and shale of the Precambrian Nonesuch Shale Formation. The ore also contained native copper, usually as individual grains but often as sheets several feet long. [3] The White Pine mine produced copper until 1995.
In its early days the company was known for its use of advanced mining and transport systems (not all of which worked very well) including the Dashaveyor, a high speed transportation system, and what was at the time the world's largest hard rock tunneling machine to be sold to a mining company. [4] It was also one of the earlier mines to use rubber tired mining equipment on a large scale. An interesting sidelight was that about 70% of the workforce was of Finnish descent, which in some ways was not surprising given the similarity between the countryside around the mine and rural Finland.
Louisiana Land and Exploration bought Copper Range in 1977, then sold the operation to Echo Bay Mines Limited in 1983. Echo Bay sold the operation to the employees in 1985 but kept part of the milling circuit. In this transaction 70% of the shares went into an ESOP (Employees Stock Option Plan) and the remaining 30% were held by Mine Management Resources. [5] It was at this time that an attempt was made to obtain a stock exchange listing, [6] but it failed due to a variety of factors, including the move of mining into areas in which royalties had to be paid e.g. to AMAX in the south west area, the general decrepitude of the mining machinery and not least the start of a general crushing of the pillars and collapse in the centrally worked out areas, which was at least partially stopped by wrapping pillars with conveyor belt and old haulage rope to stabilize them. The employees subsequently sold Copper Range to Metall Mining Corporation (shortly to rename itself Inmet Mining) in 1989. After a fruitless attempt to put the mine back into profit again, Inmet closed it in 1995. Proposals to carry on mining by sulfuric acid leaching were considered but these were shelved in 1997. [7] The mine was allowed to flood and reclamation work started. The refinery continues to operate however, and is now owned by HudBay Minerals. [8]
Houghton is the largest city and seat of government of Houghton County in the U.S. state of Michigan. Located on the Keweenaw Peninsula, Houghton is the largest city in the Copper Country region. It is the fifth-largest city in the Upper Peninsula, with a population of 8,386 at the 2020 census. Houghton is the principal city of the Houghton micropolitan area, which includes all of Houghton and Keweenaw counties. Houghton lies upon the Keweenaw Waterway, a partly natural, partly artificial waterway connecting at both ends to Lake Superior. Across the waterway from Houghton lies the city of Hancock.
Hancock is a city in Houghton County in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is across the Keweenaw Waterway from the city of Houghton on the Keweenaw Peninsula. The population was 4,634 at the 2010 census. The Weather Channel has consistently ranked Hancock as the third-snowiest city in the U.S.
Ahmeek is a village in Keweenaw County in the U.S. state of Michigan. The village is located within Allouez Township. The population was 127 at the 2020 census.
The Keweenaw Peninsula is the northernmost part of Michigan's Upper Peninsula. It projects into Lake Superior and was the site of the first copper boom in the United States, leading to its moniker of "Copper Country." As of the 2000 census, its population was roughly 43,200. Its major industries are now logging and tourism, as well as jobs related to Michigan Technological University and Finlandia University.
First Quantum Minerals is a Canadian-based mining and metals company whose principal activities include mineral exploration, development and mining. Its main product is copper, which accounts for 80% of revenues as of 2016.
Keweenaw National Historical Park is a unit of the U.S. National Park Service. Established in 1992, the park celebrates the life and history of the Keweenaw Peninsula in the Upper Peninsula of the U.S. state of Michigan. As of 2009, it is a partly privatized park made up of two primary units, the Calumet Unit and the Quincy Unit, and 21 cooperating "Heritage Sites" located on federal, state, and privately owned land in and around the Keweenaw Peninsula. The National Park Service owns approximately 1,700 acres (690 ha) in the Calumet and Quincy Units. Units are located in Baraga, Houghton, Keweenaw, and Ontonagon counties.
This is a list of the National Register of Historic Places listings in Houghton County, Michigan.
The Midcontinent Rift System (MRS) or Keweenawan Rift is a 2,000 km (1,200 mi) long geological rift in the center of the North American continent and south-central part of the North American plate. It formed when the continent's core, the North American craton, began to split apart during the Mesoproterozoic era of the Precambrian, about 1.1 billion years ago. The rift failed, leaving behind thick layers of igneous rock that are exposed in its northern reaches, but buried beneath later sedimentary formations along most of its western and eastern arms. Those arms meet at Lake Superior, which is contained within the rift valley. The lake's north shore in Ontario and Minnesota defines the northern arc of the rift. From the lake, the rift's eastern arm trends south to central lower Michigan, and possibly into Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Alabama. The western arm runs from Lake Superior southwest through portions of Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, and Nebraska to northeastern Kansas, and possibly into Oklahoma.
Copper mining in the United States has been a major industry since the rise of the northern Michigan copper district in the 1840s. In 2017, the United States produced 1.27 million metric tonnes of copper, worth $8 billion, making it the world's fourth largest copper producer, after Chile, China, and Peru. Copper was produced from 23 mines in the US. Top copper producing states in 2014 were Arizona, Utah, New Mexico, Nevada, and Montana. Minor production also came from Idaho, and Missouri. As of 2014, the US had 45 million tonnes of known remaining reserves of copper, the fifth largest known copper reserves in the world, after Chile, Australia, Peru, and Mexico.
The Calumet and Hecla Mining Company was a major copper-mining company based within Michigan's Copper Country. In the 19th century, the company paid out more than $72 million in shareholder dividends, more than any other mining company in the United States during that period.
Copper mining in Michigan became an important industry in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Its rise marked the start of copper mining as a major industry in the United States.
The Nonesuch Mine is an abandoned copper mine and small ghost town in the southeast corner of the Porcupine Mountains State Park in Carp Lake Township, Ontonagon County, near Silver City, Michigan, United States. The area was given its name soon after Ed Less discovered the Nonesuch vein of copper on the Little Iron River in 1865. The name refers to the occurrence of the copper in sandstone: "nonesuch" ore existed elsewhere in the Copper Country.
White Pine is an unincorporated community and census-designated place (CDP) in Ontonagon County in the U.S. state of Michigan. The CDP had a population of 474 at the 2010 census. White Pine is located within Carp Lake Township.
Lundin Mining Corporation is a Canadian company that owns and operates mines in Sweden, United States, Chile, Portugal and Brazil that produce base metals such as copper, zinc, and nickel. Headquartered in Toronto, the company was founded by Adolf Lundin and operated by Lukas Lundin. While it was incorporated to pursue an interest in a diamond mine in Brazil, the company re-structured and raised funds to develop the Storliden mine in Sweden. It purchased the Swedish Zinkgruvan Mine from Rio Tinto and then merged with Arcon International Resources for its Galmoy Mine in Ireland and Eurozinc for its Neves-Corvo mine in Portugal. The company subsequently purchased and operated the Eagle mine, Candelaria mine, and Chapada mine.
The Nonesuch Shale is a Proterozoic geologic formation that outcrops in Michigan and Wisconsin, United States, but has been found by drill holes to extend in the subsurface as far southwest as Iowa.
The mineral-mining industry of Panama accounted for about 1% of the country's GDP in 2006. This does not include any manufacturing of mineral commodities, such as cement or petroleum refinery products.
The Michigan Smelter was a copper smelter located at Cole's Creek on the Keweenaw Waterway north-west of Houghton, Michigan near the old Atlantic mill. The smelter was created in 1903-4 as a joint effort between the Copper Range Company and Stanton group of mines. An Atlantic dam on the site was reused by the smelter as a water source. In 1905, the smelter broke a world record by casting 292,000 pounds of fine copper in seven hours with a single furnace and only ten men. The smelter operated through World War II and stopped all operations in 1948.
The Robinson Mine is a porphyry copper deposit located at Ruth, White Pine County, Nevada, in the Egan Range, 4 miles (6.4 km) west of Ely. The mine comprises three large open pits: Liberty, Tripp-Veteran and Ruth. The ore is extracted using conventional surface methods, and is then processed into a copper-gold concentrate, and a molybdenum concentrate in a concentrating plant. Since 2012 the mine has been owned and operated by Polish copper miner KGHM Polska Miedź
Clarence J. Monette was a prolific author and historian from Michigan's Copper Country, writing extensively on Copper Country history. He has published more than sixty books and has written numerous outdoor survival guides.