283/365 - Red on the rocks

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A red vine climbing an old Quincy hoist house.

262/365 - Quincy House

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An old house at the Quincy Mine. It almost certainly was built for the mine agent or possibly a doctor -- someone very important. The house is huge, and has at least 2 stories, an attic, and a basement -- not something the mining companies would normally bother with for a mere miner!

210/365 - Summer Overlook

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It's summer, and everything is growing -- up an around a bench on a high overlook from Quincy Hill. Just a year ago, there was a house here, surrounded by a dense forest. The Quincy Mine Hoist Association purchased it and cleared it out, as part of their renovation of the nearby roundhouse.

Down below is the Portage Canal and Michigan Tech, with the Huron Mountains in the far distance.

190/365 - Hoist Stars

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A shot from my second night in a row taking star trail photos! This one is from close by -- the Quincy #4 hoist, looming like a castle.

164/365 - Quincy Dredge

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Here be ye olde Quincy Dredge: a veritable floating factory, whose purpose was to (literally) vacuum old processed sands off of the floor of Torch Lake, and send them back to the mill to be reprocessed for copper.

This photo has a fun story behind it. The dredge is beached at the shore of Torch Lake, not too far from the highway. I parked near it and walked in, where I met two kayakers who had just come to shore after looking around the water side of the dredge. We chatted, and not five minutes after I'd met them, they offered to let me take a kayak out and see it for myself! -- Which I did, of course. I love the UP!

Quincy Dry

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All Copper Country mines of any size at all had a dry house: a place where miners could change out of their everyday clothes, and into their mining gear (and back again). Sometimes they could even wash and warm up a bit, have a smoke, and shoot the breeze.

Most drys were fairly small. This, however, is the extremely large dry house from the Quincy Mine -- two stories tall and very long. Inside, you can still find some of the old lockers used by the miners.

117/365 - Exit Light

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Exit toward the light.

At an old Quincy boiler house.

113/365 - Roundhouse Window

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The inside of a window in the Quincy Mine's old roundhouse. The walls are made of poor rock (rock without copper) straight from the mine, and the shadows are from the skeletal roof beams.

105/365 - Boiler Alley

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Here's the last photo in this mini-series from the Quincy #5 Boiler House. This doorway enters the main boiler house, allowing access behind the large brick boiler supports. The boilers would have vented into pipes along this corridor, which collected together and exited into the old smokestack outside.

104/365 - Boiler Foundations

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Here's the next photo in my series documenting this lovely old boiler house: this photo comes to you from next door to yesterday's photo -- an addition to the old Quincy #5 Boiler House. These were foundations for a horizontal boiler, which provided steam for the nearby steam hoist.

You can also see the end of a railroad spur with allowed the Quincy & Torch Lake Railroad to drop off coal, showing through the window. On the left is an old cart which has been left to rot in these ruins.

103/365 - Boiler Door

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A doorway in the old Quincy #5 Boiler house -- a large brick ruin which once served up steam for the massive #2 Hoist, the world's largest steam hoist.

I swear, this spot was set up by the God of Photographers. The door leans against its companion in a perfect way, surrounded by wonderful abandoned textures and shapes. Every time I'm up at Quincy (which, as you may have guessed, is frequent), I feel compelled to try to capture this shot.

Hoists and Reflections

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Two old hoists at the Quincy Mine, both of which once served the Quincy #2 shaft-rockhouse. These are, from left to right, the newest (and largest), and the middle hoist. The original is behind my back.

84/365 - A light side, and a dark side...

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The Quincy Mine's No. 4 boiler house, in the late afternoon light. I was up at Quincy looking for a 9-sided shape, and found this instead. However, as you can see (if you look at the right parts!), the number nine still worked its way in to the photo.

75/365 - 18-178

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Numbers, numbers, everywhere! Here's another number: this is a detail of an Ensign 100, a Jeep-like car actually designed by the Copper Range company for use underground. It was modestly successful, and was purchased by a number of other mines in the area. This particular example is rusting -- where else -- outside the Quincy Mine!

70/365 - Smelter in the Fog

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The Quincy Smelter once smelted copper from the nearby Quincy Mine. Now it sits abandoned, slowly being stabilized and (possibly) being developed as an attraction and business space. Foreground: the nearly melted Portage canal. Background: Mont Ripley, a university-owned ski hill.

Starry Engine

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This is one of my favorite places: the Quincy Mine. Behind the old Hoist Building (where you can tour the world's largest steam hoist), two of the old Quincy & Torch Lake railroad's steam engines still sit, well restored and tended. This is one of them, staying still while stars wheeling overhead.

57/365 - Q is for Quincy

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Q is for Quincy, which should be no surprise at all to my regular readers! This is the Quincy Mine's powder house, which was once upon a time used to store black powder (and later, dynamite) for the mine. Here, my tripod's shadow is taking a close look at the powder house, shining in the green of the security light.

53/365 - M is for Mine

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M is for Mine, a subject I love to study -- both photographically, and historically. This is the Quincy Mine Number 2 shaft-rockhouse, which is 101 years old. It was a combined shafthouse (covering the shaft opening) and rockhouse (processing the rock brought up from underground).

The long beams in the foreground are batter braces -- strong beams designed to oppose the forces of the hoisting rope, which entered the building near the top. The hoist would bring rock-laden cars up from more than 9000 feet into the earth, which required enormous speeds and forces. After being unloaded near the top, the rock was sorted, processed, and ultimately dropped into waiting train cars near the bottom.

45/365 - E is for Engine

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E is for Engine -- a steam engine! This is the old Quincy & Torch Lake #5 steam engine -- one of several steam engines, tenders, and cars still left on the Quincy Mine property. The license plate on the front belongs (or perhaps, belonged) to the amazing Chuck Pomazal, who has devoted an enormous amount of time to restoring the Quincy engines.

24/365 - Quincy Boiler and Shaft

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Following on my theme from yesterday, here's a black-and-white view from a totally different mine site: the Quincy Mine. In the foreground are the ruins of the old #2/#4 double boiler house -- once filled with huge steam boilers, providing steam power to the mine. Behind it is the #2 shafthouse, a modern steel structure from a different era of the mine's development.

The Quincy Mine is a very different mine from the Central Mine, featured yesterday. Although both started in the 1840s, the Central was a "fissure" mine -- mining primarily huge, pure chunks of copper. The Quincy, on the other hand, was an "amygdaloid" mine -- mining rock with tiny bits of copper infused through it. As it turns out, Quincy's model was better, and all of the truly successful mines in the Copper Country were amygdaloid mines. Quincy paid dividends for more than 50 years straight, earning it the name "Old Reliable". But, just like the Central and all other Copper Country mines, the Quincy is now nothing more than a collection of shafts and ruins.