Quincy Mine

They called it Old Reliable, and it earned the name in the only way that counts: the Quincy Mining Company paid its investors a dividend every single year from 1868 to 1920.

The mine is a set of copper workings near Hancock on Michigan's Keweenaw Peninsula, operating from 1846 to 1945 with some activity continuing into the 1970s. It began with an administrative mistake. Two speculative outfits, the Northwest Mining Company and the Portage Mining Company, had each bought the same tracts of land during the mining rush of the early 1840s because government offices were not talking to one another. Rather than fight it out, the directors met and merged. Money came largely from Massachusetts, and the town of Quincy in that state gave the mine its name.

Plenty of copper mines were founded in the same rush. This one became the most successful of them and was the leading copper producer in the country from 1863.

It can be visited because the surface plant survived. The Quincy Mining Company Historic District is a National Historic Landmark District, and the associated stamp mills, the Quincy Dredge Number Two and the Quincy Smelter are all historically significant in their own right. The No. 2 shaft house still stands over the hill, and inside it is the largest steam-powered mine hoist ever built.

What survives above ground is as much of the attraction as the workings below it, and the tour covers both: the shaft house and hoist machinery on the hill, and the mine itself, which is cold and wet whatever the weather is doing on the Keweenaw.