White Pine History
The White Pine Mine itself dates back to the late 1800's, though its current configuration was born just over half a century ago. Established in 1954 by the Copper Range Company, the White Pine Mine was a project partially financed by the government to help procure copper supplies during the Korean War. The mine worked a unique deposit that required a great deal of milling and processing to procure, requiring the erection of a massive milling and smelting facility.
Along with the mine, Copper Range erected another company town. This time, however, the company took a slightly different approach. The sterilized conformity of turn of the centruy community planning was replaced by the free-flowing suburban attitudes of the 1950's. The project was a success, and the mine prospered and grew. Before long the small company town had expanded substantially, becoming a modern community of several thousand people. The town received its own mall and recreational center, gas station, and several more schools. Yet like all company towns, the community was cursed with the ever present specter of the mine's closure. In 1995 the inevitable finally happened, as the mine closed for good due to rising costs and environmental concerns.
The White Pine Mine
The White Pine orebody was mined from March 1953 to September 1995, when underground operations were suspended. The mine has 13 square miles of underground workings and during its forty-two year life span produced more than 4 billion pounds of copper and 45 million ounces of silver.
Local Geology
The mine lies within a belt of copper-bearing Precambrian rocks that extends from Mellen, Wisconsin, to the tip of the Keweenaw Peninsula, a distance of 160 miles. The White Pine sediment-hosted stratiform copper deposit is separated both stratigraphically and geographically from the famous native-copper deposits that are situated to the east and northeast of the mine. The host rock for the White Pine deposit is a series of unaltered siltstones at the base of the Nonesuch Formation, which is younger than the Portage Lake Volcanics that contain the world-famous native-copper deposits of the Keweenaw Peninsula. The main ore mineral in the sulfide deposit is chalcocite, along with small amounts of native copper and silver that occur mainly as fine grains in the cupriferous zone at the base of the Nonesuch Formation and the top of the Copper Harbor Conglomerate.
Logging Requirements
In order to log this EarthCache, send me your answers to the following questions either through email from my profile page or through messages on my profile page.
At the posted coordinates:
1. Do you find a piece of native copper or a copper bearing rock that needs to be refined?
2. What are the dimensions of this rock? Height - width - thickness?
At the waypoint, not far away, over by the totem pole, you will find a copper cake.
3. How heavy is the copper cake?
4. What does it signify?
Pictures are not required, but they are appreciated. Please post a picture of you, your GPS or anything you found interesting anywhere around the mine.
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