EXCERPT fron "The Burroughs" It was dawn when Garret made a left on to Hampton Avenue and into The Burroughs. He expected to be greeted by the crumbling hulk of the B&W Main Smelter but at some point within the past two decades, the structure and its attendant buildings had finally been demolished. In its place was Industry Park—several acres of impossibly green grass that assaulted his road weary eyes. Although town center was only two miles north, his appointment with the landlord wasn’t for another hour and he needed to shake the stiffness out of his tired bones. Splash cool water on his face. Change into fresh clothes. He parked in the gravel lot and ambled towards the central feature—an impressive ring of lit fountains encircling a copper sculpture artfully suggestive of the old, unsightly furnace. At the bottom of the fountain, the rising sun illuminated the pennies, nickels, dimes and occasional quarters that had been humbly offered in exchange for wishes fulfilled and dreams realized. Garret felt in his pocket for change and came up empty. He wouldn’t have known what to wish for anyway. Instead he read the copper plaque embedded in a large boulder: Industry Park commemorates the site of the Burroughs & Winston Mines most prolific smelting operation. In 1879, B&W surveyor Henri Klaus Vertinen discovered a profusion of amygdaloidal and conglomerate copper less than one mile south-west of this location at what would become the Rikas Mine Shaft. The rocks excavated at Rikas were first processed at a B&W stamp mill on the shore of Lake Superior before the extracted copper was transported via railroad to this location for further refining. From 1879 to 1974, the No. 2 furnace building processed just under one million metric tons of copper for use in machinery, electronics, architecture, telecommunications, pipe fittings and fuel. Copper from the Keweenaw Peninsula is used all over the world. He smiled, remembering old Mrs. Ketterling lecturing his third grade class about the importance of local history. Her own father had worked as a trammer for B&W in the early 1900’s and she recalled how brutal his job had been pushing uphill several tons of rock on tram cars. (He remembered now her offhand remark that her father had a “back like a mule” and how it had made the entire class howl with laughter.) She went on to say that her father died from consumption. That many miners struggled with consumption. (Nine year old Garret, both confused and intrigued, had pictured legions of miners slumped over massive platters of steak and potatoes, eating themselves to death.)
Posted on: Thu, 12 Sep 2013 21:10:13 +0000
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