

By 1900, the efficiency and energy of contemporary milling technologies had reached a point that, in some situations, copper production was inhibited by the mine’s inability to provide adequate rock to the mills. The Annual Report of the Copper Variety Consolidated Business (CRCC) for 1902, stated that in the case of the Baltic Mining Business, organized in 1897, the most favorable situation for the lowest operating price of the mine would be attained when the capacity of the mine to provide the mill would equal the capacity of the mill to deal with the output of the mine.
At the Champion mine, which was organized in 1899, developments have been distinctive. The CRCC report of 1902 stated that although the Champion lode was of adequate richness to provide two,000 tons of wealthy amygdaloidal copper rock per day, the business leased one particular tiny stamp at the Atlantic mill, at Redridge, that stamped 120,485 tons of rock averaging much more than 34 pounds of copper per ton of rock.
By April 1903, the Champion’s building of its personal mill at Freda, in Stanton Township, had progressed to the point exactly where it had 3 steam-powered stamps in operation, with a fourth stamp to start operate by Could 1. Currently, the business was producing plans to expand the mill to set up two more stamp heads, “which the mine will be abundantly in a position to provide just before the installation can be completed.”
In the instance of the Baltic, the mine could not initially meet the capability of its mill. On the other hand, the Champion mine had performed research on the rock created from opening the mine and produced assessments of its solution at the Atlantic mill. The benefits of the research determined that to operate at peak production and price efficiency, its mill would call for a total of six stamps and developed their mill accordingly.
Modern day technologies was also placed ideal at the shafts. The 1902 Baltic report stated that a combined steel shaft-rockhouse have been constructed at its No. four Shaft, which was “fitted with required rock breakers, (steam) hammers, and so forth.” The height of the creating was 95 feet and contained rock bins with a capacity of 800 tons.
In a push to improve efficiency at the Quincy mine, in 1907, the reduce operating area of the No. 7 shaft-rockhouse was removed, 3 tiny rock breakers have been replaced with two big 36-inch by 24-inch breakers, which have been installed ten feet greater than the ones they replaced, along with “entirely new program of handling the rock.” The alterations and improvements enhanced the rock bin capacity from 150 tons to around 750 tons.
Quincy also reported that the timbers in the wooden No. two shaft-rockhouse had develop into so weakened by that shaft becoming up-cast that a new, steel and reinforced, fireproof, shaft-rockhouse had been ordered and would be constructed in 1908. The plans for the new structure showed the height would be 153 feet, and it was to be “a throughly contemporary structure along the most effective lines of our practice.”
The Copper Variety Business, along with the Quincy and the Calumet & Hecla firms, also possessed a railroad, the Copper Variety Railroad Co., which contracted with the two mining firms to haul its rock and copper goods, giving assured and trusted transportation of all rock, coal, wood and supplies.
The Quincy & Torch Lake Railroad predated the CRRR by 12 years. Chartered in 1888, the line became operational in 1890. The railroad became required when the federal government ordered an finish to all stamp mill operations on Portage Lake, compelling the business to erect a new mill on Torch Lake. Till then, the Quincy operated an incline tramway from the mine atop Quincy Hill to its mill on the shore of Portage Lake. The six.five-mile Q&TL line ran among the mine place and the new mill, transporting mine rock to the mill and hauling coal from its storage facility close to the mill, to the mine internet site.
Twenty years prior to the Q&TLRR was the Hecla & Torch Lake Railroad. Building on the tiny railroad was begun in April 1867, although the Hecla Mining Company’s stamp mill was becoming constructed on Torch Lake.
In August of that year, Alexander Agassiz, president of each the Calumet and the Hecla mining firms, described the projects he was supervising at the mine places, which integrated improvement “of each mines themselves, the perfecting of the Calumet Rock Residence, the alterations in the Hecla mill at Torch Lake, and the building, by way of a dense forest, of 4 and 3-fifths miles of railroad with its connections to the different components of the mines.”
As stated in the Calumet & Hecla Mining Co.: semi-centennial edition, 1866-1916, the original stamp mill for the Calumet mine was situated close to the mine internet site exactly where, in 1867, Agassiz directed the creating of a dam to serve the mill. But mainly because the stream that fed the mill’s pond was not adequate for the mill and the pond, he decided to find the Hecla mine’s stamp mill on the shore of Torch Lake. The railroad, as initially constructed, transported Hecla’s rock to the head of an incline tram road, incredibly related to these utilised by the Quincy, Pewabic and the Franklin mines. By 1900, the road had been extended down the hill to the shore of Torch Lake, delivering rock to the Hecla mill, and to the newer mill constructed to deal with the rock from the Calumet branch of the mine.
An short article in the Calumet & Hecla Mining Co.: semi-centennial edition published in 1916, described the Hecla mill, which was began in 1867, and the Calumet mill, which operated its 1st head in 1872, as becoming common of almost each other concentrating plant in the copper area, with one particular exception. When rotating slime wheels had been in use given that they have been invented by William Evans at the Atlantic company’s mill, the semi-centennial publication stated that it was not till 1880 that C&H adopted the use of slime wheels at their mills.
C&H, like the other mining firms, would continue to rearrange, realign and introduce new technologies, just about as immediately as it was patented. The challenge for the Lake Superior copper mines was that the copper-bearing lodes have been distinctive from any other mineral-making ore bodies anyplace, and essential distinctive processing.





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