A Hoist and Boiler

The Cliff may have been the first successful copper mine in the district, but it didn’t happen without a few stumbles along the way. While the first drift into the rocky cliffs found great amount of mass copper in the beginning, those fortunes quickly dwindled as the drift was deepened. Mine managers were hopeful that the great ore body was hiding somewhere within the massive bluff, and began sinking a shaft into its top to look for it. But after almost 800 feet no copper was found, and investors began to falter. The Cliff was in trouble.

Luckily not all Cliff investors had lost faith in the enterprise. Dr. Charles Avery - the chairman of the board for the Pittsburgh and Boston Company - believed the great ore body would still be found, they would just have to dig deeper. While other investors balked, Avery invested most of his life savings into sinking the shaft deeper. His risky move would end up paying off big time, as 18 months later the lode was finally discovered. It ended up never having been inside the bluff at all. It was under it.

Once it had become apparent that the copper was not in the bluff, the mine turned its attention back to the cliff base, around the site of its original copper-rich drifts. There a second vertical shaft was sunk, straight down into the recently discovered copper lode. This shaft (known as the Avery Shaft in honor of Dr. Charles Avery) would receive the bulk of the mine’s attention, manpower, and resources. When the mine turned to steam power, a massive five-story hoist building and boiler complex was built at the Avery Shaft. That original hoist building was destroyed by fire, but was quickly replaced by a building who’s remains can still be found in the thick woods today.

Here’s a close look at the Avery Shaft surface plant. Like most Keweenaw shafts it consisted of a hoist house, boiler house, shaft/rock house, and a collection of other support structures. To the right of the photo is the boiler house (featuring the tell-tale boiler stack) which is connected to the hoist house in front of it. The Avery Shaft itself sits back along the base of the cliff, where the collection of timbers and framework is seen in the photo. I believe this timber-work is the scaffolding for the shaft house and it was under construction in this photo (you can see what the shaft house ended up looking like in the photo previous to this one). The long building to the left in the photo was most likely a warehouse, but also could be a machine or carpentry shop. The gabled building in the middle is a mystery, perhaps a dry house? On top of the cliff you can also see the shaft building for the No. 3 shaft - which is the one Dr. Avery insisted on deepening.

The first piece of the surface plant you find while exploring the site today, is this large monstrosity seen above. This soaring wall which stands a good 12 feet at its peak belongs to that mystery building just to the left of the boiler/hoist house. Its massive size is due to the steep sloping character of the hillside, the top of the wall here is actually only a few feet above the ground at its backside.

Here’s a shot of the building’s backside, as you can see it’s more normal in stature here. Over this wall is a 12 foot drop to the building’s basement floor.

Directly kitty-corner to that massive wall is a pile of rock rubble rising up into the thick underbrush. Climbing up its loose surface we could tell that we had found another building. The large piece of iron support bracket seen above seemed to suggest it as well. Once to the top of the pile we were sure, as we found ourselves looking out over a sprawling ruin.

The ruins were a series of parallel rock walls, one of which you can see above. Snow had managed to survive in the deep trenches between them, and a series of iron bracket and posts could be seen littered about. With the thick covering of brush and trees that had managed to grow up and around the ruins it all looked a little random and haphazard. (these ruins are featured as well in the first photo used in this post, just taken years before the forest reclaimed them) But after closer examination we were pretty sure this was the hoist and boiler house for the Avery Shaft. We were in fact standing on the hoist building’s outer foundation wall, and down below us were the lines of parallel stone pedestals on which the hoist would of been mounted.

Making our way down from atop the ruins, we took a loop around the building’s remains. Here is a shot of its soaring eastern wall. It’s impressive to think that these walls have been standing here for over a century and a half. They sure knew how to build them back then.

Continuing our loop around the remains we come across the southern wall, which is much shorter then its counterparts. It was here that we noted a very interesting rock formation, viewable in this photo on the right edge of the frame. We climbed up atop the foundation to take a closer look.

It was another smokestack, very similar to the one we had found earlier at the stamp mill. Only this one still had its steel flue attached, rising a good dozen feet out of the top of the stone base. This proved to us that we had in fact found the hoist/boiler house remains. A stack like this only meant one thing.

Here’s a closer look at the stack’s top, without the horrible over-exposure in the first image. The pocket holes across its surface could be from age, or possibly some people decided to use it for target practice. Once again, this piece of metal has been exposed to the elements for over a century and a half. Amazing.

The host/boiler house having been found we then turned our attention to finding the Avery shaft itself…

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