A Hecla Shaft

The greatest copper mine in the Copper Country (and probably the world) was born from pure happenstance. While surveying the military road running between Fort Wilkins at Copper Harbor and Fort Atkinson in central Wisconsin, a man by the name of Hulbert stumbled across a peculiar find. It was an ancient Indian storage pit, left by native miners from Isle Royale. The pit was filled to the brim with a copper treasure, and prompted Hulbert to secure the land around it. Purely by chance, those ancient miners placed their copper storage pit directly atop the great Calumet Conglomerate lode, which it didn’t take Hulbert long to discover. The Calumet Mine was born.

Just to the south of the Calumet Mine a second mine opened on the same lode - the Hecla Mine. The lode proved just as productive as the Calumet to the north, and soon the two mines (along with two other minor mines) combined to form the Calumet and Hecla Mining Company. Though now one mine, the two parts of C&H regained their original identity. North of Red Jacket Road were shafts of the old Calumet Mine (labeled Calumet #1-5), and south of the road sat the shafts of the old Hecla Mine (labeled Hecla #1-8).

C&H was nothing if not repetitive. The company was a stickler for uniformity, conformity, and standardized methods. When building the shaft houses for the mines, they built them all in a similar manner using the same general floor-plan and layout (this was brought to ridiculous conclusion with the pre-fab buildings shared between the Osceola #13, Gratiot, Kingston, and Centennial #6). Above is a photo of a standard C&H shaft/rockhouse shared by almost all the shafts along the Calumet lode. The mine we came across today - Hecla #6 - was no exception.

Hardly hiding itself at all, the ruins of the No. 6 sat along an abandoned section of Mine Street. Not much was left of the structure, which isn’t surprising since it was made of wood. Only the buildings foundations remained, in the form of a series of long rock walls sitting in parallel. I counted at least 3 such walls, with a pile of bricks between two of them which could be a fourth wall. This would match the four walls seen in the photo above at the structures base. Below is a more detailed look at what we found.

The first part of the ruins was this large concrete slab. It was actually one of two such slabs sitting side by side. The second slab was thinner then this one, but both shared the same angled top. Traditionally these were footings for “batter braces” used to counter the forces on the head frame from the hoist (thanks Joe). However, photos of these buildings show no such bracing on their front side. Also these shafts were fed cable from a central hoist, and did not have a dedicated hoist. Because of this I think these supported pulleys of some type that transfered the hoist cables upward toward the headframe.

The first wall in the series of walls is this one. It has a few interesting details, the most notable being the flat top and rim along its base. This wall is a little confusing, since it looks very similar to a wall found at North Kearsarge, used in that application as a cable stand footing. I think it was used to support a wall here.

Behind the first wall is a second. This one is much rougher then the first, and wider. It does not share the flat top and seems lower then the first. Behind it sits a large pile of bricks, which was a source of confusion for a while. Normally these types of bricks are found on a hoist foundation, not at rockhouses. But a closer inspection cleared it all up.

Upon closer examination of the bricks, we found no evidence of the threaded rods found on hoist foundations. We also noticed that these bricks were laid differently, on their side (like a wall) and not on their backs as hoist foundations would place them. This is something else, most likely a collapsed third wall built from brick. (the wall tipped over on its side, forming the large pile of broken bricks)

Sitting just behind the third wall sits a fourth, capped by a series of threaded rods. Apparently some type of machine or equipment was mounted here, but it seems like an odd place for a machine. This wall is much thicker then the others, with a large portion shown here stepping down to thinner end pieces not seen here.

Last but not least, a pair of concrete footings apparently connected by a short wall. I believe these are the footings to the framing which supported the skip road. These footings only span half of the other four walls’ lengths, which fits with the archive photo above. In that picture the building is almost three times as wide as the skip road which exits the building on one side. Another half destroyed set sits just beyond these followed by a large pile of rock and debris which must be the old shaft.

Based on all these observations, we’re pretty sure we have the No. 6 shaft here. The exact placement of the walls is up for grabs as well as the use of the slanted blocks on the building’s front end. But the rear configuration of footings matches the placement of the skip road in the photo. Confident, we moved on down the old road, to see what else we could find.

to be continued…

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