If you like ghost towns and creep old abandoned places that are damp, dark, filled with bats and a lot of history, you have to visit this place.
The Delaware Mine is one of three copper mines in Copper Country in the Michigan Upper Peninsula’s Keweenaw Peninsula that are open to the public to explore. It operated from 1847 until 1887. It is a beautiful, authentic example of what the mines in copper country were like in the 1800s.
I was expecting a well maintained walking path through the mine with ADA accessibility and lots of modern lights and safety features. Instead, I was pretty excited to find a very authentic mine experience. This mine is mostly left the way it was the day it was abandoned in 1887. You need to be careful and watch your step because of loose rocks and the original rusty mine cart rails along the floor.
There are several angled shafts that continue down into several lower levels of the mine (which are all flooded). At each junction you can see the remains of the original wood timbers and rusted rails that made up the the system to bring full carts of ore or overburden to the surface.
There is a modern set of stairs to get you down 100 feet from the surface into the first level of the mine and there are lights that very dimly light the 1,700 feet of excavated mine tunnel. Beyond that and a couple wood railings to keep you from falling onto the the defending mine shafts. The mine is pretty much the way it was when Delaware was a boom town with hundreds of residents.
The lighting mimics the very low light the miners worked in, which back then was mostly by candles attached to their hats.
We brought a high powered flashlight with and we were glad we did. We were able to light up the mine galleries, dark recesses of the tunnels, the defending shafts, walls and ceilings to see a lot of things we would have otherwise missed. We found the mine is homes to thousands of bats, which were all sleeping hanging from the ceiling in most sections of the mine. We also found many patches of bright green, lower grade copper ore in ancient cracks of the basalt lava rock that the mine was tunneled through.
When you arrive at the mine, there is a short film in the main buildings that explains the history of the area, the mine and what you will see in the mine during your self-guided tour. It also covers basic safety in the mine and they issue everyone a hard hat to use on the tour.
The length of time the tour inside the mine takes depends on the visitors’ interest level. We had some people breeze past us and power walk the mine and leave before we were a third of the way through. Others spent a lot of time looking at the details and thinking about what it was like to work these mines by candle light in horrible conditions in the days before OSHA safety standards.
Above ground there is is a trail taking visitors past the ruins of two original stone mine buildings in the woods and past mining equipment used at this mine and others in the area. The museum lot is built on top of a massive tailing pile, which extends down the hill, and extends far to the north of the parking. We were told we could walk the piles and to keep an eye out for bits of copper in the rocks.
Native Americans Gathered Copper Here to Trade for more than 1,000 years
If you walk down the road and hill you have to drive up to access the mine, there is a short trail into the woods off the road that brings you to a large rock that is naturally split in half large enough for adults to walk through. This was the site of one of many Native American surface mines where there was exposed copper. They gathered the metal and traded it with other tribes. Ceremonial ornaments made from the copper mined by the Indians here has been found as far away as Ohio, fashioned by the Mississippian mound builder Indians for more than 1,000 years ago. This surface source of copper was why the Delaware mine was sited here.
Other Copper Mines to Explore in the Michigan UP
There are three old copper mines that are open to the public to explore. We visit both the Delaware mine and the Quincy Mine. Both were impressive, but I liked the Delaware mine the most because it was pretty much the way it was left in 1887.
The Quincy Mine, operated by the National Park Service, is impressive because of its large above ground structures, and numerous ruins of old stone buildings. The largest building houses a preserved, massive steam engine hoist.
The Quincy Mine tour uses a more modern water drainage tunnel entrance designed for trucks to drive through. The walls and ceiling and are reinforced with mid-20th century metal guard rails and modern mine support systems. There is a array of mining equipment in the Quincy mine section you can tour. The also gave a great overview of what they were mining and how it was mined, including a how they mined by candle light in the mid 1800s, and how incredibly loud a pneumatic drill was that they used starting in the early 1900s.
The most impressive part of the tour was when the tour guide showed up a massive mine gallery that stretched a couple hundred feet up at an angle and went horizontal as far as the eye could see into the distance darkness. This was part of miles worth of vast open galleries just like this cut into the volcanic rock to follow a rich seam on copper that was mined until the end of World War II. When you see this very large man-made space inside the earth and realize this is just one of more than 50 levels on the mine, you realize the vast nature of this mine and that what you see only just scratched the surface of what is there.
Here is information on the three mines you can tour in Michigan Copper Country:
• The Quincy Mine, run by the National Park Service, is just north of Houghton on Route 41, 49750 US-41, Hancock, MI 49930. www.quincymine.com
• The Delaware Mine, 7804 Delaware Rd, Mohawk, MI 49950. It is located near the northern tip of the Keweenaw Peninsula, about 10 miles from Copper harbor just off Route 41. www.keweenawheritagesites.org/site-delaware_mine.php
• The Adventure Mine, 200 Adventure Ave., in Greenland, MI 49929. www.adventuremine.com
Find more information on Copper Country sites at www.keweenawheritagesites.org.
