Download or read book Copper Country Explorer Field Guide No. 5 written by Mike Forgrave and published by . This book was released on 2015-08-07 with total page 98 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 extended far past the boundaries of Houghton and Keweenaw Counties, its industrial reach extending far into the interior of neighboring Ontonagon County as well. There several mines took shape along the rugged hills found within the county's center, remote and isolated sites residing far from hustle and bustle of the rest of the empire. These mines included far more failures then successes, resulting in a landscape sprinkled primarily with nothing but abandoned shafts and empty adits. Yet there were some successes, mines such as the Victoria, the Mass, the Lake and the Minesota; whose copper riches fueled the erection of sprawling modern surface plants adorned with towering rock houses and massive hoisting plants. Today those mines are long gone, but the remains of their impressive surface plants can still be found deep in Ontonagon's rugged interior.