The Legacy of American Copper Smelting: Industrial Heritage versus Environmental Policy

Chapter 5. Quincy Smelter

Chapter 5 Quincy Smelter WHEREAS, the Quincy Smelting works is the last remaining historic smelter left anywhere in the world and reflects smelting technologies of the late nineteenth Century . . . WHEREAS, the smelter site continues to severely deteriorate with open windows, roofs, and walls . . . WHEREAS, the [Keweenaw National Historical Park] has not been successful in securing funds to stabilize buildings nor to restore any of the Smelter buildings for historic interpretive purposes; NOW THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED, that the Cities of Houghton and Hancock City Councils . . . do hereby support the restoration of the Quincy Smelting Works and request the Keweenaw National Historic Park make the restoration of the Quincy Smelting Works its highest priority, funded by the Federal FY 2010 budget and BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that if this effort to restore the Quincy Smelting Works is not funded by the Fiscal Year 2010 Federal Budget, the facility be recommended for demolition in the interest of public safety and blight removal, and allow redevelopment opportunities to be undertaken by Franklin Township. —Houghton Hancock, Joint City Councils Resolution (2007) The first historic mining-related landscape feature a visitor to the Michigan Copper Country sees and recognizes as industrial is likely a head frame. Most visitors pass dark sand beaches unaware that they’re looking at stamp sands and drive through Michigan Technological University not knowing that it is the twenty-first-century incarnation of the Michigan School of Mines, founded in 1885. No—the first physical element that most visitors Quincy Smelter 150 likely notice is the regionally iconic Quincy shaft-rockhouse that is part head frame and part sorting building. It sits on the apex of Quincy Hill, just up from the Portage Lake waterfront. Like the Butte gallows frames, the clean, reclad shaft-rockhouse is a ubiquitous postmining symbol that appears in many images and forms throughout the region. But much more like the trip from Ducktown to Copperhill than the trip from Butte to Anaconda, as visitors proceed north along US Highway 41 and approach downtown Houghton, they may glimpse a largely disheveled conglomeration of historic buildings in various states of disrepair on the waterfront across the narrow lake. Although not as large or imposing as the Copperhill site, this collection of structures belongs to the smallest of the big three twentieth-century smelters on the Keweenaw Peninsula and is nearly as intact in 2008 as it was when it closed in 1971, after 73 years of service. Most people in the region desire some sort of positive development of such a valuable and visible piece of waterfront property. Although some would like to see the buildings preserved and interpreted as an important historic site with mixed-use public space, others, citing blight and decay, call for their complete removal to allow for new residential or commercial opportunities. This dichotomous sentiment is echoed in the joint city council resolution quoted above. Copper smelters and smelting landscapes in general receive only modest heritage attention often because smelters, which create some of the largest environmental problems in mining districts, tend to get demolished and remediated quickly after their functional use is gone. Further, smelters often exist in the historical shadow of their associated mining landscapes, which tend to get much more heritage attention. Although many mining museums talk about smelting, there are virtually no copper smelting museums and, compared to mining heritage sites, almost no preserved and interpreted American copper smelter sites or partial sites exist outside of the fading thirty-acre parcel behind the Ducktown Museum, the Anaconda Stack, and, to a lesser degree, the Old Works Golf Course. Even Swansea, Wales, home to the single greatest concentration of copper smelters ever, pays little homage to—and has few standing remains left of—the historic industry of the town. The Michigan copper district, however, has an opportunity to change the perception of smelting and its technological, social, and ecological ef- Quincy Smelter 151 fects on the metallurgical production system. The Quincy is the only nearcomplete historic copper smelter site in the world with in situ reverberatory furnaces and related equipment, offices, support buildings, and still-occupied homes of smelter workers (see figure 5.1). The site sits within the Quincy Mine National Historic Landmark district, is a former Historic American Engineering Record (HAER) documentation project, and is a significant contributing site to the Keweenaw National Historical Park (KNHP) (see figure 5.2). Unfortunately, the site is also part...