Copper Range Company

The Copper Range Company was a major copper-mining company in the Copper Country of Michigan, United States. It began as the Copper Range Company in the late 19th century as a holding company specializing in shares in the copper mines south of Houghton, Michigan. The company was bought by Louisiana Land and Exploration in 1977.

Copper Range controlled through share ownership the Copper Range Railroad and the Baltic Mining Company. The Copper Range Railroad served much of the southern part of the Copper Country, and the Baltic Mining Company owned the copper mine at Baltic, Michigan.

In 1901, the Copper Range Company, prevented by Michigan law from issuing more shares of stock, incorporated a new entity in New Jersey, the Copper Range Consolidated Company. Copper Range Consolidated used its new shares to get control of more copper mining companies by stock swaps. It gained half the stock in the Champion mine. The company swapped shares to acquire nearly all the shares of the Trimountain mine, which had been misrun by its principals, Thomas W. Lawson and Albert C. Burrage. Copper Range came to own nearly all the copper mines south of Portage Lake, just as the Calumet and Hecla Mining Company owned nearly all the mines north of Portage Lake.

The Copper Range properties mined copper in the form of native copper in stratiform orebodies in the flow tops of Precambrian basalt lava flows. The ore horizons are known locally as amygdaloids, after the amygdaloidal-shaped gas bubbles in the lavas that filled with minerals.

Copper Range shut down the Champion mine, its last operating native copper property, in 1967.

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