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The Untapped Value of Michigan's Upper Peninsula's Land
Almost everywhere on Earth, copper remains embedded, locked within rocks and affixed to other elements. It is unusable until a fire is built hot enough to melt stone. This is why early copper cultures first needed to invent smelting.
On a particular peninsula in Lake Superior, this was not necessary. The copper emerged from the ground in its pure, metallic form, in lumps weighing tons. Remarkably, people began mining it around 9,500 years ago, making it as ancient as any mining operations in the world, including those in the Middle East.
In the 1860s, a surveyor mapped these ancient diggings…
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