8K SMELT

People have been working copper for 8,000 years.  Smelting came along after another 3000 to 4000 years.  Imagine our ancestors standing around a smelting site as if it were a campfire and breathing in all those fumes.  During the first few thousand years, smelting production was usually in the hundreds of pounds or less a year at individual sites from present day Turkey to the Caspian Sea.  Take a look at this link at how our ancestors would have smelted copper: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8uHc4Hirexc

Fast forward to 19th Century Britain...

Cornwall was a major copper producer into the mid-nineteenth century when their mines started running out.  What's important at this time for the UP copper producers is Cornish smelters were state of the art.   When the smelters shed jobs, the Cornish smelter workers as well as their mining brethen came to the US and put their skills to use, developing the US copper smelting industry.  By coincidence, copper mining started in the UP just as the British copper industry petered out.  Their misfortune, our good fortune!

And economic development, 1898 style, led to...

When the Quincy Mining Co. decided to build a smelter in 1898, it was able to take advantage of all the technological advances of the past century, thanks in part to the advances in smelter technology brought over from Cornwall.

WE'LL BE THERE FOR FINN FEST 2013

Soon Finn Fest starts in Hancock. They'll be clocking into the Fest on June 19th and heading out on Sunday. The Quincy Smelter is a hop, skip and a jump from downtown Hancock. 

Why not join us on Saturday.

The Quincy Smelter Association is hosting its first tour on June 22^nd between 10:00 AM and 3:00 PM at the Quincy Smelter. We're a right turn on M-26 and about quarter mile up the road on the right. Every hour, starting at 10:00 AM, we'll be offering a guided tour of the entire smelter. The last tour begins at 2:00 PM. Our entrance fee is $5.00 a person, children under 10 free and a discount for AAA members.

The Quincy Smelter is the only historical copper smelter in America. Come see how your ancestors made the UP famous for its copper. Many of the buildings are intact and we have a lot of the original machinery. You'll be able to see how power was generated, coal and ore brought in, how it was moved to the furnaces, what it took to melt the ore and turn it into copper, how it was stored and shipped and much, much more.

See you there!

FIRST QUINCY SMELTER TOUR OF 2013

FIRST TOUR OF 2013

Our first tour of 2013 is June 22, 2013.  Tours will start on the hour at 10:00 AM with the last tour starting at 2:00 PM.

We look forward to showing you the buildings and machinery that were used to produce pure copper at the end of the 19^th and early 20^th centuries. The Quincy Smelter is the only intact historical copper smelter in the country. Its a rare opportunity to see a part of America's industrial heritage.

The Quincy Smelter Association can provide tours to groups or organizations depending on the availability of volunteer staff.

Contact Information:
Horst Schmidt
Horsthear@ Yahoo.com

The Quincy Smelter Association is a private, non-profit volunteer organization.  The fees we charge for tours are used to pay operating expenses . The Quincy Smelter is owned by Franklin Township. The Town Board has authorized the Association to run the tour operation.

SPRING AT THE SMELTER

As I'm sitting here in the Portage Lake Library in Houghton looking across the canal at the smelter, the water is open and the snow is beginning its meltdown.  This would be the start of the shipping season with lots of copper ingots to send out.  

There are the pilings of the dock sticking out of the water where ships and lake boats tied up to get their cargo.  The warehouse next to the dock had lots of the copper smelted during the winter.  The warehouse is the large wood structure on the east end of the site.  It also was where the workers cleaned up on the 2nd floor after their shifts.  

Originally, copper ingots were packed in wooden barrels made by the smelter's cooperage shop.  This would have been in the twilight years of sailing ships and the emergence of the lake boats we know today.

Presumably, the ingots would have been hoisted and tightly packed into the holds (as the cargo storage area is known) of the ships.  If you've been on a small boat or ship,  you know how much everything can shift around.  If the cargo got loose or they had just piled the ingots loose in there, it could have capsized or torn a hole in the hull during a storm.  The copper went to foundries in cities along the other Great Lakes to be turned into wire, cooking utensils and many other products.  

And this was also the time when the coal ships came in.  More later...

SNOW, MORE SNOW, YET MORE SNOW!

Its hard to believe all the snow still here in the UP.  As you can imagine, the smelter is completely cocooned in the white stuff.  If you're coming into Houghton, stop at the Chamber of Commerce parking lot (where US 41 splits into two one way streets).  You'll get a panoramic view of the smelter site on the other side of the Portage Canal.  With the construction of new metal roofs a couple of years ago, the walls and interiors of most of the buildings are more protected from the ravages of nature.  It means the smelter will be here for many years.

You may also notice the "land" the smelter buildings sit on protrudes further into the Portage Canal than other properties around them.  Before there was a smelter, the Quincy Mining Company sent its ore down the hill from the mine head to be processed for copper in its mill.  First, the ore was pounded by heavy metal rods in "stamp" machines into sand, hence, "stamp sands".  Then the next step was to separate the copper grains from the sand by using large tables where the sand was floated away leaving the copper.  Since the percentage of copper was very low, the the high volume of sand had to be disposed of by the company.  The easiest way was to dump it into the canal.  By 1890, the Federal government said the company could not continue because the Canal channel was endangered.  The mill was closed.

So, that's why the smelter sticks out so far.  If you find this story interesting, post a note to let us know whether or not you would like more.