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| Lake of the Clouds |
The humans were up bright and early and left me all day while they checked out the area. Their first stop was the Ontonagon Historical museum
, where they picked some interesting facts about the town.
, where they picked some interesting facts about the town.
In its heyday Ontonagon had 8000 people living in the area, 2000 in the city limits. In 1896 there was a massive fire and a lot of the town was lost. Today it has the largest school district by area in the State of Michigan. The district encompasses 2700 square miles, but only has 300 students in the entire district. Mining and forestry were the two main industries supporting the area. Today the mines are closed and they are not cutting many trees. Thus shipping has also gone away . The last mine in the area, the White Pine mine closed in 1987. Today there are 2 business located on the White Pine property. One is in the mine itself, growing herbs and other medicinal products and the other, believe it or not, is a chopsticks factory and that's located in the old machine shop. These chopsticks are being shipped to China! Apparently the perfect wood for chopsticks is available in this area.
Next they were off to the Porcupine Mountain Wilderness State Park. (It's called that, because from the water, the mountains look like a crouching porcupine.) This park was opened in the mid 1940s to preserve one of the last large stands of virgin maple and hemlock. They went to Lake of the Clouds on the east side of the park and then drove to the western side and checked out Nawadaha waterfall on the Presque Isle River. They also stopped at the site of the Halliwell Mine, a mine that was started 1895 by a group of Cleveland investors and closed in 1901. In all over 40 unsuccessful mines were dug within the park's boundaries The Halliwell Mine is not credited with any commercial production of copper. Next they decided to go to an old copper mine town called Victoria. Four of the original company houses have survived/been rebuilt and for a small fee they took a guided tour of them and learned about living in a company town. (The trip to the town was interesting---Nancy thought she found a shorter route to the town which ended up being a 14 mile trip on National Forest seasonal two track road that was wet red clay----truck got washed before they came back to the camper. I'm glad I wasn't along----I hate car washes!)
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| 1200 lbs of native copper in a flower bed |
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| Old Victoria mining town |
I hear we are off to Wisconsin tomorrow---I love cheese. I got some of the smoked white fish Ron bought in St Ignace and I bet I'll get some Wisconsin cheese too!
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| Dirty Truck |
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| Nawadaha waterfall on the Presque Isle River |
