This history of Isle Royale traces almost 5,000 years of human efforts to harvest its natural resources. From the Paleo-Indians who extracted native copper to the 19th-century miners, fishermen, farmers, and sportsmen, this isle apart has been visited, mined, and plundered for centuries. Under the protection of the National Park Service since 1940, the island is returning to the natural regime
that preceded the arrival of the first humans. Moose, wolves, and bald eagles now share the island with low-impact campers and boaters. The reader will visit the lighthouses, steamships, fish camps,...

From the railroads' beginnings in the early 1870s to the complex rail network of the 1900s, the advance and decline of the copper industry in Michigan's Upper Peninsula was mirrored by the railroads that served it. With the abandonment in 1976 of the Houghton tracks of the Soo Line (formerly the Mineral Range, Duluth South Shore and Atlantic), Copper Country was once again without the railroad service that built it. This book seeks to tell this rich story of Copper Country railroads through a collection of pictures from various archival sources, including the authors' personal collections,...

Go West, young man . . . When Horace Greeley made his famous statement in the pages of Harper's Weekly, he was not referring to the goldfields of the late-1840s California, he was speaking of Michigan's western Upper Peninsula. In the mid- to late 1840s, Michigan's copper resources were rediscovered by state geologist Douglass Houghton, setting off a mining boom rivaled only by the gold rush of 1849. The richest copper and silver ores, and even some gold, were found in the mines of Houghton County. Famous mines such as "Old Reliable," the Quincy mine, and the Calumet and Hecla mines gave up...