Gogebic County is located at the far end of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, bordering Wisconsin. The county was named after the Chippewa word 'agogebic,' which means "a body of water hanging on high." It's a well-chosen name for this location which includes part of the southern Lake Superior coastline, 315 named lakes, (including the largest lake in the Upper Peninsula, Lake Gogebic), and many inland rivers with 32 waterfalls.

When compared to most of Michigan, Gogebic County is rather young. The area encompassing current-day Gogebic County came out of Ontonagon in 1881. Ontonagon County (1848) is a child of Chippewa (1826) and Houghton (1845). For earlier ancestors, one needs to look in Mackinac (1818), the parent county of Chippewa. Schoolcraft (1848) and Marquette (1851) created Houghton.

Flags of three nations have flown over the Upper Peninsula, and ultimately, Gogebic County. The first Europeans to discover the Great Lakes were the French who held the country bordering upon these inland seas until 1763. England took possession following the Seven Years War and held sway for twenty years until title passed to the United States by the Treaty of Paris in 1783.

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In the early 1600's, when the French established a system of fur fairs at Montreal, Indians brought the product of their trap lines for sale or barter. Samuel de Champlain, founder and governor of New France, originated the idea of sending young Frenchmen home with the Indians to study their language, customs and the geography of the region. Thus it was that Etienne Brule, in 1618, became the first white man to see the greatest of fresh water lakes and paddle a bark canoe along the shores of Lake Superior.

Pierre-Esprit Raddisson and Medard Chouart des Goseillers were the first white men who left an account of their explorations in the region. The first of their four trips to Lake Superior was in 1654. The two men explored the south shore of Lake Superior and much of what are now Northern Michigan, Northwestern Wisconsin and Northeastern Minnesota.

When Radisson and Groseilliers returned to Montreal on August 19, 1660, they were accompanied by an Ottawa flotilla of sixty canoes. A missionary journeyed with the Indians back to their homeland. This decision was momentous for what would become Gogebic County some 225 years later, as it brought to this area the earliest recorded instance of white men traversing the county and camping within its boundaries. The missionary was Pere' Rene Ménard, a 55-year old Jesuit, and the pioneer of pioneers in the area known as the County of Gogebic. Father Ménard explored the area and conducted religious services at Lac Vieux Desert near Watersmeet in 1661.

The most important artery for transportation of goods through Gogebic County in the days of the fur trade was the Montreal River portage extending from Lake Superior to Lac du Flambeau. The name of this river appears on the oldest map ever made of Lake Superior. Fathers Claude Allouez and James Marquette, missionaries who followed in the footsteps of Pere' Rene Menard, made a map of the Lake Superior region in 1669 ~ a map so accurate that it was used for navigation purposes until well into the 18th century.

It wasn't long before French trappers entered the region. Development of the fur trade created two new classes of men... Coureurs des bois, or rangers of the woods, and Voyageurs, or canoemen. These hardy pioneers, inured to hardship, were a strong and sturdy set. They guided their frail canoes through the waves of the big lake when in storm and ran the perilous rapids of fast moving streams. They roamed the trackless wilderness in search of furs, helped the missionary on his way, and for 200 years were lords of the vast northwest wilderness. However, a decrease in the supply and demand for furs brought about the trapper's quick disappearance from lake and stream.

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In 1840, the War Department sent Captain Thomas Jefferson Cram to map the area between Lac Vieux Desert and the Montreal River, the present boundary between Wisconsin and Michigan. The Chippewa band of Indians signed a treaty relinquishing their claims to the western part of the U.P. in 1842. It was now possible for the federal government to issue mining leases and sell the land.

Until this time, people were not very interested in the western U.P. Too cold and too desolate, they claimed. But all of that was to change. The first official recorded notice of the presence of iron ore on the Gogebic Range was included in the 1848 report of Dr. A. Randall, who saw exposures of iron ore on the Fourth Principal Meridian which crosses the range approximately halfway between Hurley and Mellen, in Wisconsin. The great iron ore boom along with the dream of growing richer would quickly change the minds of the wealthy industrialists from the east.

Fear of the Indians and military necessity for wagon roads in the Civil War days gave the Gogebic County area its first north and south highway between 1865 and 1868. That first thoroughfare connected Fort Howard at Green Bay with Fort Wilkins on Lake Superior at the tip of the Keweenaw Peninsula. This road, known as the "Old Military Road" is, in part, still in use today as U.S. Highway 45 where it passes through Watersmeet.

First indications of iron ore in the Gogebic, youngest of Michigan’s three iron ranges, were reported in 1848 by Dr. Randall, a geologist. Discoveries were made during the years that followed, but 36 years elapsed before the first mine ~ the Colby at Bessemer, Michigan ~ would open.

One of the leading men in the Gogebic discoveries was Dr. Raphael Pumpelly, said to be the first professionally trained mining engineer in the United States. Born in New York in 1839, educated in Paris and at Germany, and with his doctor’s degree from Princeton, he served as Michigan State Geologist from 1869 to 1871. In the fall of 1871, Dr. Pumpelly was commissioned to buy Michigan land containing pine, iron formation, hardwood and sandstone. Hardwood was very valuable for making charcoal and Lake Superior sandstone was in great demand. Pumpelly wrote in his "Reminiscences" that he came to this iron range by sailboat starting from Marquette, Michigan, to Bayfield, Wisconsin, and then across the bay to the mouth of the Montreal River, in the vicinity of Little Girl’s Point. It was at that spot with the aid of Indian guides that Pumpelly, his wife, a French voyageur and his educated Indian wife, journeyed 20 miles south by land along the Montreal River to what would later become Ironwood.

After establishing camp in tents, Pumpelly left the trail one morning and climbed what is now Newport Hill in Ironwood. While resting, and as he said, "thinking," he noticed yellow stains in the rock. He took a yellow-spotted rock sample with him ~ a rock that had iron oxide in it. Suspecting that his find might be valuable, he made the trip to Marquette and purchased two miles of the Range where the Newport and Geneva mines were to be built several years later.

Attention was drawn in Michigan to the possibilities of the Gogebic (or Agogebic) Range by the report of the Geological Survey for the State of Michigan, published in 1872. Professor Raphael Pumpelly and Major T.B. Brooks traced the iron formation across the Montreal River into Michigan and, in later years, mapped the range extending eastward toward Lake Gogebic. Professor Pumpelly had, several years before, selected this same area as part of a land grant to be received by the Lake Superior Ship Canal Company as compensation for a canal dug on Keweenaw Point.

The Gogebic Range was actually initially explored on the Wisconsin side, but it was in Michigan where ore was first mined. In 1873 and 1874, Wisconsin geologist, Increase A. Lapham, did a survey after which he intimated that vast deposits of iron lay buried in the range that crosses the boundary line of Wisconsin and the northern peninsula of Michigan.

It was Richard Langford, trapper and hunter, who is credited as being the first to see ore on Colby Hill. His first trip to the Gogebic was in 1872, when he made a journey of 110 miles on snowshoes. It wasn't until 1880 that he made another journey through the woods, and following a path cut through the tangled forest by a hurricane, found clean hematite ore under the roots of a fallen tree.

He showed some iron ore samples to A. Lanfear Norrie, of New York and London, who had come to prospect the Gogebic area. Mr. Norrie wasn’t interested in the samples, but Captain Nat Moore, an unemployed mining captain, was. Moore had it examined, proved it to be iron ore, and raised money to purchase the tract in Bessemer. He formed the Colby Mining Company and began extensive exploratory operations. In just a couple years Moore would amass a fortune estimated at several millions of dollars.

Langford said he was supposed to have a one-fourth interest in the mine, but didn’t get it. Captain Moore denied Langford’s story and said he found the Colby deposit beneath the rocks of a birch tree that had been blown over by the wind. Blind and penniless, Langford spent his last days in the Ontonagon County Infirmary. "I could have established my right to a quarter interest in the Colby mine, but I did not care to take such a step. I have never had a lawsuit, been arrested, or served as a witness, of juryman. In fact I have never been put under oath."

Moore was dubbed a pioneer of the Gogebic.

With the Colby opened and the ore body proven, one of the greatest land rushes of the north country began. Lapham's summation that a great iron formation lay partly in Michigan and partly in Wisconsin was correct. The 80-mile Gogebic Range is divided by the Montreal River, a short stream that flows into Lake Superior about twenty-five miles east of Ashland, Wisconsin. This range extends almost eighty miles between Atkins Lake in Wisconsin and Lake Gogebic in Michigan; the Michigan section is approximately twenty-five miles long and stretches from the state boundary at Ironwood to a point slightly west of Lake Gogebic.

Within a year, seven mines were in operation and scores of other sites were under option. In May, 1882, iron had been discovered near Wakefield by George A. Fay, who had been prospecting between Ramsey and Lake Gogebic. The discovery became the famous Sunday Lake Mine. In 1883 and 1884, A.L. Norrie began exploring land which was later known as the Norrie Mine in the city of Ironwood. The Norrie formed the nucleus of the large group of mines which later was operated by the Oliver Mining Company under the collective title of the Norrie - Aurora Mines.

The first shipment of ore came from the Colby Mine in 1884. The 1,022 tons were loaded on flatcars and shipped to Erie, Pennsylvania, via Milwaukee.

The early explorers and prospectors on the Gogebic Range experienced the particular hardships of a land devoid of roads or even passable trails. Supplies had to be packed overland from Ontonagon or were brought by boat from Ontonagon to the mouths of the Montreal and Black rivers. However, soon after the opening of the range for mining, the railroad made its initial entrance. The Milwaukee, Lake Shore and Western Railroad had begun a line that was to run from Milwaukee to Ontonagon, and by 1883 the railroad had reached Watersmeet, a few miles across the Wisconsin line into Michigan. With the fabulous riches of the Gogebic Range becoming more well-known, the company diverted its attention and extended the railway line into the new mining district during the summer of 1884.

With the railroad came a flood of immigrants and the wilderness was quickly changed to a place that resembled a small community. The first settlers were the Irish and English because men of both nationalities were familiar with underground mining operations. Two thousand miners were employed between Sunday Lake and Montreal River.

Europeans by the thousands, ready, willing, and able to handle the difficult labor in the iron mines, would provide the source of labor. The mining companies posted notices of employment at ports of entry and scattered them throughout European towns. Steamship lines eagerly spread the word that workers were needed and lured immigrants to work in the mines. This flood of Scandinavians, Finns and Germans would not peak until well into the twentieth century. Entire families moved en masse from Europe for the chance to become rich in America. Several mining companies competed for the rich iron ore, and each one tended to recruit miners from specific areas of Europe. As immigrants arrived, it was only natural that they sought a community of their own language and custom. Thus, locations grew with Finnish or Swedish or Italian, French-Canadian, Austrian or English families.

Transportation to the neighboring mines was a major problem, especially with winter snows measuring 200 inches and more. The living quarters of the miners had been built as close to the mines as possible.

Although only a short distance apart, the mining locations were physically separated by "stockpiles", vast areas of waste and non-usable ore piled high on the horizon. Depressions, called "caves", where unproductive underground mines had been deliberately blasted for safety, caused a transportation barrier between locations. Shortcuts over the stockpiles and caves were made up of footpaths and rail grades which criss-crossed the mining company land. An electric streetcar ran from Iron Belt, Wisconsin, through the downtown areas of Hurley and Ironwood, to Jessieville Location in Michigan, a distance of about 12 miles.

Mining camps and mining towns sprang up ~ typical frontier mining towns with wooden buildings, wooden sidewalks, streets of slush and mud in winter and dust in summer ~ towns well supplied with saloons, gambling halls and other places of pleasure for prospectors, woodsmen and miners. Each of these small settlements had a family-owned grocery store or two, a tavern, and often, company-owned stores and homes. It was more meaningful to identify one's home as being in the area of a specific mine ~ Newport, Norrie, Colby, or Sunday Lake location, for example, than in Ironwood, Bessemer or Wakefield. Ethnic and cultural distinctions made each location a separate entity. Many homes in the locations housed a family plus several boarders who had come to the area to work in the mines. They worked in shifts, and when one gang of workers went to work, the miners who worked the shift before came home to sleep in the beds that had just been vacated.

For awhile prosperity came to everybody on the range. Leaving out the salaried officials, the average pay of the men at the Norrie mine was $2.37 a day--and in this average, covering a period of six months, are reckoned the wages paid the surface men, who received $1.65 a day. Some of the miners made $180 a month.

Tent towns became thriving communities as ore mines were opened; as reports of gold brought an influx of prospectors and as mining stock ~ some of it worthless ~ was floated throughout the country. It wasn't long before tent and board dwellings in some of areas of the mining towns became splendid brick blocks where palatial houses were constructed.

Newspapers were issued in sumptuous editions. One issue of The Gogebic Iron Tribune included twenty pages, was printed on tinted paper in handsome style and comprised 10,000 copies. Newspaper men were carried to the range in palace cars to view the properties; so were moneyed men from the East, who had been attracted by the stories sent abroad. Gogebic stocks began to be quoted in New York and were listed regularly. Bulletins were issued daily. A stock exchange was opened in Milwaukee. The advertisement that the Gogebic range received was phenomenal.

In an incredibly short time 15,000 persons had been attracted to the range. The building of Ironwood demonstrates the rapid growth. The path that was blazed through a virgin forest from the right of way of the Lake Shore road to the Norrie mine ~ a distance of half a mile ~ less than two years later approximated the main street of a town of 4,000 inhabitants (Ironwood).

On a forty-mile run of the Lake Shore road, from Ironwood to Ashland, Wisconsin ore trains were run at express speed. This bit of railroad became the best-paying mileage in the United States. Eighteen tons of ore made up each car, forty cents a ton was charged for this short run to the ore docks, and sometimes the same car made the run twice in a day. Every car of the many that made up the numerous ore trains thus brought a revenue of $14.40 a day to the railroad company, or $1,440 for a hundred cars. It was reckoned that there was a profit of a dollar a ton for every ton of ore dug and sold during this period of prosperity. In one year the Norrie mine alone shipped a trifle less than a million tons of ore. Under such circumstances it was not to be wondered at that those who were "on the ground floor" felt that they could afford such extravagances as wearing costly diamonds in place of ordinary buttons. The Colby mine yielded enormous profits. The Aurora tempted an Eastern syndicate to pay $600,000 for a half interest, or 20,001 shares. This was $30 for each share of $25 face value. They increased the shares to 100,000 and these fell to just $27 each after this enormous inflation. The $600,000 purchase money was deposited in cash in one of the Milwaukee banks.

The range became the center of frenzied economic speculation during the late 1880s, and the total capitalization for the companies formed in the year 1886 reached a total of over one billion dollars.

Such were the conditions that made everybody connected with the range consider himself a millionaire, or a prospective millionaire. In May, 1886, one year after the commencement of the boom, one of the range newspapers gave a summary of the values of the Gogebic mines that was regarded as entirely reasonable and conservative in placing the total at $24,000,000.

"The Gogebic range, which a year ago to-day was practically unknown and of uncertain and doubtful value," was the editor's comment, "is to-day estimated to contain more wealth than the entire assessed valuation of some of the oldest states in the Union."

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In 1906 the Norrie mine was considered the greatest iron mine in the world.

By 1910, three separate railway lines served the Gogebic Range, and approximately four million tons of iron ore were being shipped annually.

In the end, iron production on the Gogebic Range would total 300 million tons.

The Gogebic range was the last U.P. iron range to be opened and at the peak of the mining era in 1920 produced 7 million tons annually. The mining of the Gogebic Range only lasted about 75 years, ending in 1966 when the Peterson mine closed. It was more cost-effective to import lower cost ore from other countries.

The second major industry in Gogebic County was in its virgin timber. Since 1880 lumbermen had discovered untouched forests of hemlock, pine and hardwoods in Gogebic County. However, by the 1940's, the forests were mostly cut down, leaving but few stands. The product of the harvest helped build homes for settlers throughout the middle west and went underground to make possible the mining of iron ore. In 1941 however, Gogebic County embarked upon a county forest project to demonstrate that with selective cutting, under proper management, forests could be perpetuated, of increasing value and quality. By 1956 the project included 45,604 acres out of the total of 703,102 acres in the county. Originally contained in Gogebic County in 1931, the Ottawa National Forest now contains 275,351 acres. Professional foresters of the United States Forest Service oversee the Ottawa and continue to ensure timber needs of the American people are met. Privately owned and scientifically managed timber holdings include another large segment of Gogebic County.

Today, the tourist industry has taken over as a primary source of revenue for the county. Snowmobiles, downhill and cross-country skiing and snowshoeing are the big winter attractions along with hunting deer and bear. In the warmer months, the crop of trout, walleyes and smaller game fish attract fishermen from all over the Midwest. The area is abundant with hiking trails, beautiful waterfalls and kayaking streams.

The legacy the mines created remains. The headframes are gone, but the locations still exist with descendents of those early miners and merchants, some still living in the homes built by their ancestors.