Copper country

The Copper Country is an area in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan in the United States, including all of Keweenaw County, Michigan and most of Houghton, Baraga and Ontonagon counties as well as part of Marquette County. The area is so named as copper mining was prevalent there from 1845 until the late 1960s, with one mine (the White Pine mine) continuing through 1995. In its heyday, the area was the world's greatest producer of copper.

The Copper Country is highly unusual among copper-mining districts in that the copper was predominantly in the form of copper metal (native copper) rather than the copper oxides or copper sulfides that form the copper ore at almost every other copper-mining district. Native Americans mined copper from small pits as early as 3000 B.C.

The Michigan State Geologist Douglass Houghton (later to become mayor of Detroit) reported on the copper deposits in 1841. The first successful copper mine, the Cliff mine, began operations in 1845, and many others quickly followed. Mining of the most productive deposit, the Calumet conglomerate, began in 1865. Mining took place along a belt that stretched about 100 miles southwest to northeast.

While mining continues on a small scale, tourism and logging are now the area's major industries. Popular tourist destinations include the cities of Copper Harbor and Houghton, and the Porcupine Mountains with Lake of the Clouds. Snowmobiling is very popular in the winter, and snowmobile trails are found in most areas.

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