King Copper -- Prelude

Among my favorite drives along Superior's basin is the 24 miles or so of two lane blacktop named South Boundary Road that runs up and down and all around through splendid woods from the Park Headquarters of the Porcupine Mountains Wilderness to the Presque Isle unit on the western edge of the park. It’s what you call “Seasonal”. That is it’s not plowed so in winter you travel it at your own risk. Like every other day I suppose, but more so.

To get there off the Gogebic Range, head out of Wakefield and hook a quick left onto County Road 519 to leave civilization behind. In Thomaston -- which lost its post office in 1926 but was once a happening place -- take a second left and you’re headed straight north into mostly nothing but a waving ocean of trees until the Presque Isle River falls out from the southeast to greet you on the right.

From there north becomes relative and after a bit you meet up with the aforementioned South Boundary Road. Along County 519 lies today’s story.

We’ve dug copper in the region for better than 5,000 years and times being tough, we’ve returned to take some more. A company named Orvana intends to dig a mine between the Black and the Presque Isle River, out in the woods near the shore of Superior. They call it “Copperwood”, designed to sound like a bucolic subdivision but reachable only via County Road 519. Fourteen years the job creators say, they’ll pound copper from hard rock and make the region worth something again. Sell the treasure on the open market so American firms can bid for our copper against the Chinese or whomever. Create jobs. Make some money. Fourteen good years maybe more, to help reinvigorate our community. Win win.

On the last day of September, a group of people got together at the Wakefield Twp. Hall. The mood was celebratory, the way it is when folk gather to slap themselves on the back for a job well done.

Turns out, Orvana will contribute something less than a quarter of the $3.5 million it’ll cost to convert 519 into an industrial service road, which meager percentage was sufficient for all involved to tout the virtues of public/private cooperation, even despite 75% of the tab being left to you and me. Giddy with enthusiasm and as reported by the Ironwood Daily Globe the next day, State Senator Tom Casperson took the opportunity to exclaim:

“Let’s put our people to work and let’s not accept people telling us that we’re ruining the environment. We won’t accept that. Together, they can’t stop us.”

They? Who the Hell is they?

The legacy of mining litters the Superior Basin like fallen leaves in autumn. From ancient copper pits on Isle Royale east to Sault Ste. Marie, which canal was dug so we could haul riches away from the place, northwest from there to the copper, gold and platinum around Marathon Ontario, southwest to the famous Wasabi Iron Range in Minnesota, across to my home turf of the Gogebic Range and finally back to the proposed Copperwood on the western edge of the Keweenaw Fault where famous mines once sprung up atop ancient pits. We’ll not escape the legacy of mining along our scenic drive and will have ample opportunity to decide for ourselves what that’s meant to the region and how it continues to inform the culture.

At any rate, County Road 519 isn’t where we’ll make the case either way, as it’ a done deal.

I just wanted you to know that even before final permits for the mine have been let, work on the road has begun and is scheduled for completion in 2013.

So if you'd prefer to drive Michigan County 519 and see that:

leading to this,

which after a short distance culminates here,

then you’d best take the opportunity sooner rather than later, ‘cause all the way from Wakefield right up to the South Boundary Road, County 519 is about to be crawling with heavy equipment.

King Copper demands no less, in the name of preserving multigenerational despair.