Largest mine hoist ever built still runs at Quincy No. 2 Mine in Hancock, showing off for tourists today. (Quincy Mine Hoist Association) U.P. CONTROVERSY: Strife Has Stalked Upper Peninsula for a Century
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Headed out of Marquette bound for Houghton-Hancock we were just about out of gas.
We had paid $3.56 per gallon or so in Bay City at the start of the trip to the Michigan History Conference.
Then, as the indicator neared empty, the skies opened and the Great Spirit spoke loudly: "Stop at the Indian gas station in Marquette County--gas there is only $3.17 per gallon!"
Obediently, as with all the proclamations of the Great Spirit, we did. We filled up, took a picture of the bill for Facebook and drove happily up toward the end of the earth as we have known it -- Houghton-Hancock.
Although we found there had been strife, labor vs. capital, in the U.P. for a century, the latest conflict is between the U.P. Gasoline Dealers Association and the Indians.
Last year things got a little nasty when gas stations pulled racks of the Marquette Mining Journal that had editorially endorsed the Keeweenaw Bay Indian Community's plan to build a station near Marquette.
"...[G]asoline is an unregulated commodity, in terms of pump price," the editorial pointed out. "That fact has opened the door for big oil to gouge. And gouge they have, brazenly, unashamedly. What has been done with prices in the Marquette area borders on the obscene, especially when one considers what's charged in places such as Houghton and Hancock. Now, this cozy arrangement may get kicked to the curb, if the land (for the KBIC gas station) is placed in trust.
"AAA Michigan reports that gas prices in the Marquette area are almost always higher than the state average."
The editorial incited an uproar. And, the station was built just in time for us to drive by with the gauge on empty.
The dealers appealed Gov. Rick Snyder and the feds for relief -- without success -- from the price-cutting casino operators whose pump prices are about 20-30 cents a gallon lower without state taxes.
We happily filled our gas tank with the low price gas and drove closer to the scene of real action 100 years ago -- Houghton-Hancock.
Wearing hard hats and heavy coats furnished by the Quincy Mine Hoist Association, my wife Dolores and I climbed aboard a trolley, then a tram and followed a guide 700 feet underground where the temperature was 43 degrees.
This was our destination, our reason for striving skyward into the UP, a mine tour that preceded the UP History Conference June 28-29, 2013.
We listened intently to the strident female guide in hard hat who really knew her stuff about the world's largest mine hoist.
The Quincy Mining Co., she said, was incorporated in 1848 and produced copper from 1851 through 1967, paying uninterrupted dividends from 1867 to 1920.
Preserved there atop the mountain in Hancock is the Quincy No. 2 shaft and rockhouse and the No. 2 Hoist, the largest steam powered hoist in the world. Produced by the Nordberg Mfg. Co., of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the 30 foot high drum held 10,000 feet of 1 5/8 inch wire rope and could hoist 10 ton skips at the rate of 3.200 feet per minute.
The Quincy Mine is one unit of the larger Keweenaw National Historical Park administered by the National Park Service.
Some 253 miners died in the mine during its brief 11 year life; while copper by the ton poured out of the mine, the company barely broke even and finally succumbed to the Great Depression in 1931.
As much copper as was removed in the early mining still remains, covered with water to the 9,200 foot depth (nearly two miles) of the mine. It is not economically feasible to remove the huge mass of copper, at least that's what conventional wisdom is now.
State Geologist Douglass Houghton had discovered holes in the ground from which the Indians were taking copper; some of it was traded as far south as Tennessee.
That began the mining industry and the history of violence that marks the Upper Peninsula of Michigan as one of the most interesting places in the state.
On our way back, starting a 10-hour drive, we saw a sign that said "Expensive Horse for Sale." That gave us something to talk about. Why expensive horse? Why not just "Horse for Sale."
Then it hit us: the word "expensive" would keep away the lookers, the horse buyers without the ready cash who would just take up time. The sign would no doubt eliminate the $50 buck offers and let serious buyers know this was no ordinary nag -- it was an "expensive horse," one you could ride proudly in the Upper Peninsula parade, if there is such an animal.
The horse sign kind of fit the several places we saw advertising "Just Ahead, Real UP Tourist Trap." We didn't buy the horse, nor even look at it, and we kept driving right by the Tourist Trap, and the casinos scattered everywhere.
Nope, we opted instead to go 700 feet down in a copper mine. That's how smart we trolls from below the bridge are! ###
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