Soda Cans
Often when exploring the woods and fields of the Keweenaw, we stumble upon trash. Some might say that everything we feature on these pages is trash, and I suppose technically it is. But here we aren’t talking about poor rock walls or still smokestacks. We’re talking about old bottles, buckets, pots, pans, plates, and even cars and refrigerators. Some of the trash is recent, but others can date back decades or more. While new trash is just that - trash - these older finds become something else entirely. It becomes a look into the past. It becomes a part of history.
Industrial Footprints
Today the heavy hands of industry have left their mark on the Torch Lake Valley. Along with the more than 500 acres of stamp sands scattered along the shore, the valley is home to the remains of over a dozen mills and smelters, miles of abandoned rail corridors, and a scattering of dams and trestle pilings. While many parts of the Keweenaw have rebounded nicely from the days of mining - the Torch Lake Valley is having a harder time. Only time will tell, but at least here the scars from the Copper Countries past are loud and clear.
What’s New at CCE…
UPDATE: MARCH 21 2008
Some more new items on the site to share with everyone out there. Here we go…
First I created a new product tour for the Champion No. 4 DVD, even if you have the DVD already (and I thank you!) you should check it out. I think it give a much better overview [...]
Keweenaw Sands (p3)
The steam stamp technology that helped propel an industry into profitable territory required large amounts of water to function - somewhere in the vicinity of millions of gallons a day. This forced more modern mines to place their mills near the only sources of water large enough to supply these numbers - Torch Lake, Portage Lake, and Lake Superior. But this wasn’t the case a generation earlier, when a mill’s gravity stamps required only a fraction of those water needs. Because of this mills could be located along rivers, streams, or even small man-made lakes. These “inland mills” as they are often called were done away with by the turn of the century, but many of these mills can still be located by the stamp sands they left behind.