Related to those Isle Royale rock piles, the sign at the Quincy Lookout scenic turnout still labels those piles as existing. The sign refers to them as rock “mounds” atop the hill overlooking Houghton. Of course you look now and the piles are gone.

Also interesting is that sign thanks the Quincy Mine for donating and up-keeping the property.

A great part of the charm of that region is the old mining remains and poor rock piles. I’m sorry to see it vanishing like this, but as we see, the poor rock itself has considerable value as crushed road metal, etc.

Incidently, it’s always fun to watch the copper rock road gravel for shiny red metal that car tires tend to polish up. I’ve found a small piece or two that way….

The C&H Newsletter did mention testing of 4,400 tons of rock from S kearsarge, No 1 & 2 N Kearsarge, Ahmeek #2 and the Centennial Conglomerate. Most of this was crushed at the Houghton County road commission and looks to have been hand picked through, they said they did find some chunks up to 275lbs, but most was to small to hand pick. As a follow up to this, 500 tons from the Allouez Congolmerate was crushed at Ahmeek #2 rockhouse and shipped to the Ahmeek Mill. They do mention a by product of this project was crushed rock for road construction and were going to a market study for its sale and usage. Whatever was hauled for these tests was sold to the county.
A later issue mentions about shipping rock from Ahmeek #2 to the old Kearsarge shaft and running it through the rockhouse and sending 500 tons a day to the mill, so maybe rock from Ahmeek #2 had some value.
Funny how now, people are using the crushing the rock and selling it, but not worrying about the copper content.

The Isle Royale piles are all gone now, so I imagine that even if it were true, something was done with it long before now.

This reminds me of something an old guy up there once told me. That one of the Isle Royale mine poor rock piles was a govt. job in WWII (WWI?) and they just mined the rock and then stockpiled it without milling it.

Now I don’t know if that’s a myth or not (it probably is), but if it were true, then that pile would be richer in copper than the others, or so you’d think.

Herb, I was doing some reading in C&H’s company newsletters from the 1950s when C&H was trying to extend its life, I believe in Part 2 comments you had mentioned about pulling the copper out of the different sands, whether it was worth it or not.
C&H actually did try that in the late 1950’s, they also sampled some of the poor rock piles. One of the sands that did show good promise was the red sands of the Allouez mine. But they never really list the end result, obviously, it wasn’t worth the time as the sands still are there.