Hello, steemians! Welcome to my page, eh!
Today's Dtube video is a visit to the above ground portion of the Delaware mine site. The Delaware mine is located in Keewenaw county just off highway U.S. 41, about 8 or9 miles west of Copper Harbor, at the top of the Keewenaw Peninsula. The Delaware mine was one of the first copper mines in the copper country of Michigan's Upper Peninsula, it operated from the 1840s through to the 1880s when it closed due to the copper veins running out. There was a pretty decent size town located next to the mine complex, but when the mines closed in the 1880s, everybody left Delaware to work at other mines. There are no remaining signs of the town now, there is only the ruins of several of the mine buildings. The people who run the mine tour operation live at the location and have a gift shop and an outbuilding with various artifacts on display, not all of which relate to the Delaware mine. There is also a protected mine pit that was dug by the pre contact Native Americans who lived in the area for centuries. It is said that there are the remains of thousands of these little pits where the indigenous people dug out the copper by hand with stone tools. This copper was traded all over North America for centuries and used for tools, weapons, and ornaments.
The Keewenaw copper is said to be the most pure copper deposits in the world and is also the largest known copper deposit in the world. Of course, much of that copper has been mined out of the area now, from Copper Harbor all the way to Ontonagon.
This video is a bit longer than my first 2, even with all the editing that I did it ended up being almost 12 minutes long. I hope that's not too long to watch.
Here's a few pictures of some of the things that are on display at the mine site.
Some mine car wheels.
An old mine car frame. This may have been used to haul timbers into the mine.
This is a picture of the ancient pit where the pre contact people mined copper by hand. It's not very big, they just dug out the mass copper that was exposed to the surface.
The plaque that explains the ancient pit.
That's all I have for this post, I hope you found it interesting!
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