August 12, 2025 • 7 mins
In the early 1900s, Hancock’s Quincy Mine—nicknamed Old Reliable—was one of America’s most productive copper mines. It reached over a mile underground, ran the world’s largest steam hoist, and fueled Michigan’s Copper Country economy for decades.
But the work was grueling, the hours long, and tensions boiled over in the 1913 strike—culminating in the Italian Hall disaster, one of the darkest days in Michigan’s labor history.
In this End of the Road in Michigan episode, we uncover the full story: the rise, the innovation, and the strife that shaped the Quincy Mine and the community around it.
Listen now and step back into a world where copper was king—and the cost of progress was paid in human lives.
#QuincyMine #MichiganHistory #CopperCountry #EndOfTheRoadInMichigan
But the work was grueling, the hours long, and tensions boiled over in the 1913 strike—culminating in the Italian Hall disaster, one of the darkest days in Michigan’s labor history.
In this End of the Road in Michigan episode, we uncover the full story: the rise, the innovation, and the strife that shaped the Quincy Mine and the community around it.
Listen now and step back into a world where copper was king—and the cost of progress was paid in human lives.
#QuincyMine #MichiganHistory #CopperCountry #EndOfTheRoadInMichigan
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
On a ridge above the Portage Canal near Hancock stands the framework of a once-dominant copper
(00:05):
operation, the Quincy Mine.
People called it "old reliable" for a reason.
From the Civil War era through World War I, the company paid annual dividends almost
without fail, a streak running from the 1860s through 1920.
By the late 1890s Quincy was expanding.
(00:26):
It had leveraged the Peu-Wabick load in a migdaloid copper body that crossed its ground and
then consolidated neighbors, Peu-Wabick in 1891, Mezzanard and Pontiac by the Decades End,
and later the Franklin.
Those moves helped Quincy outlast most key-win-all competitors.
This growth showed up on the hill, the company built hundreds of houses, schools and a full
(00:51):
set of services, shaping a company town above Hancock.
Immigrants, Finns, Cornish, Italians and others filled the payroll.
Life off-shift ran through ethnic halls, churches and company neighborhoods.
But control ran from the office down, housing, stores and rules were all within the company's
(01:12):
reach.
Quincy also invested in technology.
In 1901 the mine adopted underground electric college, swapping animal power for locomotives
and steel cars, an efficiency jump that sped or to the shafts.
The visual symbol of this era rose in 1908, the number, two shaft rock house, a steel-frame
(01:37):
giant that combined hoisting and crushing in one structure, from here or wrote out to
mills and smelters.
The number two became Quincy's deepest reaching more than 9,000 feet along the incline and 6,225
feet below the surface.
To beat gravity at that depth Quincy built a new hoist house in 1918 for an engineering
(02:00):
headline, "The Nordberg Steam Hoist, the largest mine hoist in the world at the time."
With a 30-foot drum and massive cylinders, it served the two incline skipways of shaft number
two, designed for high-speed, heavy lifts.
Which specs put cable speeds at roughly 3,200 feet per minute over 30 miles per hour?
(02:25):
At street level Quincy kept more value in house.
Across the canal at Ripley the Quincy smelting works opened in 1898 to 99.
For decades it processed Quincy's output and handled work for other mines.
The complex later closed in 1971 and unusually was left largely intact, a rare survivor
(02:47):
of copper smelting architecture.
All of that scale depended on labor.
Work underground meant heat, dust, noise and risk, long hours on the drill and shovel.
In 1913 management pushed one man pneumatic drills to replace two man teams.
Miners saw a higher risk and job loss.
(03:10):
That summer Quincy workers joined thousands across the range under the Western Federation
of miners in a walkout for safer equipment, better pay and an eight-hour day.
The strike lasted eight months.
Ruther.Wane.edu
The strike's most painful moment did not happen at a shaft.
(03:33):
On Christmas Eve 1913 in Calamets, Italian Hall, a false cry of fire in a packed holiday
party sparked a crush on the stairway.
33 people died, 59 of them children.
The causes and culpability are still debated, but the loss is not.
When the strike ended in 1914 the key demands were not met.
(03:57):
Many miners left for Detroit's factories, others returned to work on the company's terms.
Production moved on, but the social fabric had changed.
Through the 1910s Quincy still posted big numbers.
By 1910 the mine had produced on the order of hundreds of millions of pounds of copper
across its long run, and the number two shaft kept reaching downward, but price pressure
(04:22):
mounted after the war.
As copper fell in the 1920s high-cost deep mining in the Kiwinaw struggled against newer
Western operations.
The dividend streak ended by 1920.
The risks never left.
On October 29, 1927 a fall of rock in the number two shaft killed seven men, one of the period's
(04:45):
worst on-site incidents at Quincy, then came the final blow.
As the Great Depression deepened, demand collapsed.
Quincy stopped producing copper in 1931.
The shutdown date sits in company and local records.
Times would only return later, briefly, when prices and war needs rose.
(05:07):
The story didn't end there.
In 1937, with copper prices up, Quincy reopened, and during World War II, the mine supplied
metal to the Allied effort.
The company also built a reclamation plant on Torch Lake to dredge stamp sands, pulling
out copper left behind by the old mills.
(05:28):
After price supports ended, Quincy closed again for good in 1945.
The smelter later ran in support of reclamation until 1971.
Today, many of these pieces are preserved.
The number two shaft rock house still stands, one of the site's most recognizable profiles.
The Nordberg Hoist remains in its grand brick house, where you can study the drum and engines
(05:53):
up close.
The smelter at Ripley is now interpreted as the oldest and most intact example of its type
from that period.
And the Quincy and Torch Lake right of way and shop area speak to a time when ore moved
by small locomotives and lake boats.
Tours today connect visitors with this complete industrial system, surface, underground, and
(06:17):
the finishing steps at the water's edge.
His arc from the 1890s to 1931 is clear.
Aggressive expansion on the Peu-Wabick load, early adoption of electric college, record-setting
depth, and a world-class Hoist, a smelter complex that kept value local, and workers whose
(06:39):
lives made all of this run through routine shifts and crisis until the market said, "Stop."
Stand on that hillside above Hancock and you can see the frame of the shaft house, the
Hoist house, and the rock piles that line the ridge.
They are not just artifacts.
They are the remains of a system that once reached 9,000 feet into the earth and sent copper
(07:02):
across the great lakes and beyond.
And they are the setting for a story about work, technology, and a community that was tested
and changed, especially in the winter of 1913 to 14.
If you visit the key when all, you can still tour the Quincy Mine and the Smelter site to
see how the pieces fit together.
(07:23):
It's a direct look at how Michigan's copper country powered a nation and what it cost.
On a ridge above the Portage Canal near Hancock stands the framework of a once-dominant copper
(00:05):
operation, the Quincy Mine.
People called it "old reliable" for a reason.
From the Civil War era through World War I, the company paid annual dividends almost
without fail, a streak running from the 1860s through 1920.
By the late 1890s Quincy was expanding.
(00:26):
It had leveraged the Peu-Wabick load in a migdaloid copper body that crossed its ground and
then consolidated neighbors, Peu-Wabick in 1891, Mezzanard and Pontiac by the Decades End,
and later the Franklin.
Those moves helped Quincy outlast most key-win-all competitors.
This growth showed up on the hill, the company built hundreds of houses, schools and a full
(00:51):
set of services, shaping a company town above Hancock.
Immigrants, Finns, Cornish, Italians and others filled the payroll.
Life off-shift ran through ethnic halls, churches and company neighborhoods.
But control ran from the office down, housing, stores and rules were all within the company's
(01:12):
reach.
Quincy also invested in technology.
In 1901 the mine adopted underground electric college, swapping animal power for locomotives
and steel cars, an efficiency jump that sped or to the shafts.
The visual symbol of this era rose in 1908, the number, two shaft rock house, a steel-frame
(01:37):
giant that combined hoisting and crushing in one structure, from here or wrote out to
mills and smelters.
The number two became Quincy's deepest reaching more than 9,000 feet along the incline and 6,225
feet below the surface.
To beat gravity at that depth Quincy built a new hoist house in 1918 for an engineering
(02:00):
headline, "The Nordberg Steam Hoist, the largest mine hoist in the world at the time."
With a 30-foot drum and massive cylinders, it served the two incline skipways of shaft number
two, designed for high-speed, heavy lifts.
Which specs put cable speeds at roughly 3,200 feet per minute over 30 miles per hour?
(02:25):
At street level Quincy kept more value in house.
Across the canal at Ripley the Quincy smelting works opened in 1898 to 99.
For decades it processed Quincy's output and handled work for other mines.
The complex later closed in 1971 and unusually was left largely intact, a rare survivor
(02:47):
of copper smelting architecture.
All of that scale depended on labor.
Work underground meant heat, dust, noise and risk, long hours on the drill and shovel.
In 1913 management pushed one man pneumatic drills to replace two man teams.
Miners saw a higher risk and job loss.
(03:10):
That summer Quincy workers joined thousands across the range under the Western Federation
of miners in a walkout for safer equipment, better pay and an eight-hour day.
The strike lasted eight months.
Ruther.Wane.edu
The strike's most painful moment did not happen at a shaft.
(03:33):
On Christmas Eve 1913 in Calamets, Italian Hall, a false cry of fire in a packed holiday
party sparked a crush on the stairway.
33 people died, 59 of them children.
The causes and culpability are still debated, but the loss is not.
When the strike ended in 1914 the key demands were not met.
(03:57):
Many miners left for Detroit's factories, others returned to work on the company's terms.
Production moved on, but the social fabric had changed.
Through the 1910s Quincy still posted big numbers.
By 1910 the mine had produced on the order of hundreds of millions of pounds of copper
across its long run, and the number two shaft kept reaching downward, but price pressure
(04:22):
mounted after the war.
As copper fell in the 1920s high-cost deep mining in the Kiwinaw struggled against newer
Western operations.
The dividend streak ended by 1920.
The risks never left.
On October 29, 1927 a fall of rock in the number two shaft killed seven men, one of the period's
(04:45):
worst on-site incidents at Quincy, then came the final blow.
As the Great Depression deepened, demand collapsed.
Quincy stopped producing copper in 1931.
The shutdown date sits in company and local records.
Times would only return later, briefly, when prices and war needs rose.
(05:07):
The story didn't end there.
In 1937, with copper prices up, Quincy reopened, and during World War II, the mine supplied
metal to the Allied effort.
The company also built a reclamation plant on Torch Lake to dredge stamp sands, pulling
out copper left behind by the old mills.
(05:28):
After price supports ended, Quincy closed again for good in 1945.
The smelter later ran in support of reclamation until 1971.
Today, many of these pieces are preserved.
The number two shaft rock house still stands, one of the site's most recognizable profiles.
The Nordberg Hoist remains in its grand brick house, where you can study the drum and engines
(05:53):
up close.
The smelter at Ripley is now interpreted as the oldest and most intact example of its type
from that period.
And the Quincy and Torch Lake right of way and shop area speak to a time when ore moved
by small locomotives and lake boats.
Tours today connect visitors with this complete industrial system, surface, underground, and
(06:17):
the finishing steps at the water's edge.
His arc from the 1890s to 1931 is clear.
Aggressive expansion on the Peu-Wabick load, early adoption of electric college, record-setting
depth, and a world-class Hoist, a smelter complex that kept value local, and workers whose
(06:39):
lives made all of this run through routine shifts and crisis until the market said, "Stop."
Stand on that hillside above Hancock and you can see the frame of the shaft house, the
Hoist house, and the rock piles that line the ridge.
They are not just artifacts.
They are the remains of a system that once reached 9,000 feet into the earth and sent copper
(07:02):
across the great lakes and beyond.
And they are the setting for a story about work, technology, and a community that was tested
and changed, especially in the winter of 1913 to 14.
If you visit the key when all, you can still tour the Quincy Mine and the Smelter site to
see how the pieces fit together.
(07:23):
It's a direct look at how Michigan's copper country powered a nation and what it cost.
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