Download or read book Copper Country Explorer Field Guide No. 6 written by Mike Forgrave and published by . This book was released on 2015-08-07 with total page 110 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... The great Copper Empire was complemented by an equally impressive network of rail, roads of iron that connected shaft to shaft, mine to mill, and mill to shore. Joining these mine railroads was even more rail, a trio of common carriers along with a street railway transporting people and freight to and from communities all across the peninsula. In the end the Copper Country would boast over a dozen railroads and several hundred miles of track, creating one of the densest and most prominent rail networks in the nation. A century later finds those mines closed and the railroads that supported them abandoned. Yet a great deal of the old rail network remains, hidden alongside the road and deep within the forest, scattered remnants of a great empire that once was.