Download or read book Copper Country Explorer Field Guide No. 2 written by Mike Forgrave and published by . This book was released on 2015-01-13 with total page 66 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Here at Copper Country Explorer we tell the legend of a forsaken empire that once reigned over the scenic shores of the Keweenaw Peninsula, an empire ruled by copper. In no other place in the world did it occur in such purity and abundance. Its discovery led to one of the great colonizations of the modern age, transforming the remote and rugged wilderness of the Keweenaw into an industrial metropolis of over 100,000 people. It was not to last however. After over a century of rule, the empire would draw its last breaths. The mines closed, the people left, and the industrial metropolis returned to the wilderness from which it had come. In its place would be only ruins, the crumbling remnants of a lost civilization we know today as the Copper Country. It is within the shadows of the lost empire that this field guide wanders, exploring the ruins and remnants of a land lost in time. While the empire may have fallen, its legacy endures - crumbling ruins buried in the rugged wilderness, soaring stacks rising high above sprawling forest, and grand sandstone buildings lining quaint village streets. It is this field guide's mission to document these glimpses into history, and share the stories they tell. Featured in this volume...For a quarter century the Isle Royale Mine was the king of the mountain, sitting high atop the hill overlooking Houghton and the Portage valley. Its line of rock houses and soaring piles of poor rock stood as monuments to a prosperous and industrious time. Yet as was always the case across the copper empire, success was fleeting and before long the great Isle Royale succumbed to the march of progress - its monuments dismantled or hauled away as road fill. While its shaft houses and rock piles may be no more, the old mine managed to leave its mark on the landscape above Houghton - in the scattered ruins found scattered alongside the road.