On a whim, I bought tickets to a 9am tour of the Quincy Mine last night. After typing ‘museum’ into google maps . . . surely there had to be an attraction besides another hike (I like hiking, but I wanted to shake things up). It was really an amazing tour to start the day, even though my insomnia had me painfully dragging myself out of bed for the 40-minute drive to Houghton to make the tour start time.
Keweenaw Peninsula was once a vibrant mining community — from the 1840s to the mid twentieth century. Quincy Mine is one of the few places left where we actually view that history and learn about the lives and culture of the miners. An hour of the tour was spent underground in an adit, a horizontal passage in the mine. We got to learn about the tools the miners used, their working conditions and wages, and the fatality rate. There were 253 deaths recorded at Quincy Mines, ‘recorded’ being the key word. If you smashed your leg and died from gangrene a week later that didn’t count. When they actually looked back and took into count deaths and serious dibalitiang injuries (the loss of limb or blinded kind), the causality rate was 33%.
Thoroughly educated and cold (it’s seems to have cooled another ten degrees on the peninsula today), I brunched at the Miner’s Cafe before heading to a shorter afternoon hike at Jacob’s Falls. I hiked along a gorge and through the ruins of Arnold Mine. Another quiet, peaceful exploration.
Back at the motel I read for a while and then took another trip to Eagle Harbor Inn for dinner where I had breadsticks and pizza and wine and made friends with an old man from Spring Green who has property up here and told me his family history dating back to their immigration from Sweden in the 1860s.
I’ve debated whether to travel somewhere else for a few days or go home tomorrow — my initial bookings are up — and I think I’m going to go back home. I could wander forever, but I know where my heart lives.
With Love,
Natalie