Pillars
Exiting the pump house, we found ourselves facing a long line of concrete pillars stretching out ahead of us. There were three sets laid out in parallel rows. The first consisted of a single square base – not a pillar really – sitting about two feet high. The next line consisted of conical pillars about four feet high that looked like grey traffic cones. Next to them was a line of larger pillars that were longer in length but roughly the same width. And last - stepped down a level - were a series of much larger and taller structures more randomly placed with some sporting slanted tops. It was a sea of pillars.
Concrete Walls and Trestles
Moving up a terrace from the rows of pillars discussed earlier, we find ourselves atop a series of short rock piles. These piles are of poor rock, and are scattered in numerous spots along the back wall to the mill. These rocks once were stored in bins that sat atop the concrete wall we now faced. The bins were most likely steel in construction, and were removed for scrap when the mill was demolished in the 60’s.
Smokestacks and Stamp Sands
As we leave the Champion Mill, we take one last look at the monument that sits along with it - the smokestack. This is the first thing you see as you near the mill, and is one of your most obvious clues to this sites history. Like the Gay stack and countless other stacks that still inhabit the skylines of towns and villages in the Copper Country, it represents a dead industry and a lost way of life. Once spewing from its top the black smoke of progress, it now only casts shadows across the ruined decay of history.
Return to Champion Mill
With the winter months killing off most of the vegetation around the ruins we were able to get much better shots of a few highlights from our last trip. First is this panoramic look at the pump house ruins, which were hiding behind a veil of brush last time. This building housed the steam pump used to bring water up from the lake to the top of the stamp mill. The angled concrete platform on the right (barely visible below the snow) houses the feeder pipe from the lake.
