Old Victoria – A Copper Mining Ghost Town – Ontonagon County

It is a taste of homestead Upper Peninsula. Old Victoria, a ghost town from the copper boom, shows what life was like homesteading the U.P. Though some of the site has been destroyed or collapsed over the years, Old Victoria has many of its original homesteads still standing. Thanks to the efforts of a local group called the Society for the Restoration of Old Victoria, many of the buildings have been restored and refurnished in their original condition. Unlike Fayette, the U.P.’s best known ghost town and a small shipping port on Lake Michigan, Victoria is remote and rugged buried in the Ontonagon wilderness.

Old Victoria is thus one of the least known yet most interesting attractions the Upper Peninsula holds. The town was carved out of one of the harshest sections of the rugged U.P. landscape. Situated at the top of a Michigan mountain, part of the picturesque Ontonagon River Gorge, Victoria is a part of the Gogebic Mineral Range. When visiting here, you get the feel for what it was like to struggle in a new harsh land.

Old Victoria is 2 miles west of Rockland on Victoria Road. The drive in is
steep and rocky, showing the formidable and rough landscape. The forest has regrown back to much of its original density. Modern lifestyle makes relating to the settlers survival difficult. Furthermore, people of today would probably be dumbfounded over how they had to make a living or, for some, make a fortune from the minerals that might be buried beneath.

The restored homesteads try to recreate that life. When you walk through them, you see how small and tight these homes were. The old and crude furniture and the ancient stoves show that comfort was rare if not nonexistent. Life was Spartan at best.

Old Victoria, part of the Keweenaw Heritage Trail, lists among the National Register of Historic Places. Like so many places in the U.P., Old Victoria’s history is fascinating. This area was legendary even before the Europeans came. Along the shore of the Ontonagon River laid a two-ton piece of copper known as the Ontonagon Boulder. The local Native Americans worshiped it. The Europeans lusted for it.

The Legends of Old Victoria Begin.

As early as the late 1600s, explorers dug into the hill that made up Victoria’s landscape, looking for copper. The British adventurer, explorer, Alexander Henry made a sojourn here to search for the Ontonagon Boulder himself. He chipped off a large piece of it. Then, he had his companions begin digging  into the high banks of the Ontonagon hoping to find a huge vein. Henry then left for Sault Ste. Marie to get supplies to begin mining in earnest. When he returned, his men were waiting for him. The diggings had collapsed from soft clay. They called it quits right then and there.

Another early attempt was made to mine at the Victoria location a few years later. Building on the discovery of prehistoric copper culture ancient pit mines dug on the ravines, digging at the Victoria location began again. Because of the harsh winter, they moved out after a few months of digging. But they didn’t leave without finding what they were looking for—the hill was rich with copper. At the bottom of their shaft was a one-ton piece of copper.

It laid there until the mid-1800s when the copper boom caused speculators to open mines all over the U.P., and Victoria was no exception. The early mining company invested hundreds of thousands of dollars on various mining ventures throughout the early years, without any payoffs. Victoria, perched at the top of a mountain, presented many problems difficult to overcome. The solutions to these problems gave Victoria its notable place in history.

The Victoria Mine and a Village Grows Up.

The area was not going to make getting at the copper easy. From the start, mining attempts were plagued with problems. Serious mining operations began, but logistics kept the mining business from seeing a profit. Then a forest fire destroyed all the buildings Victoria Mining Company had erected. Its stamp mill (a mill for crushing ore for further extraction) was destroyed, and a new one was built in a clearing along the Ontonagon River to prevent fire danger, only to have it swept away by a spring flood.

So much time was spent overcoming natural obstacles that no mining was done. The company even erected a giant windmill to pump water out of the mine and into the stamp mill. The Victoria Mining Company erected a sawmill to create timbers for shaft supports and used wood to fire the steam boilers, but, because of the forest fire, wood was scarce. So it had to find an alternative. The company tried coal, but the grade
was so steep from Rockland that a railroad was virtually out of the question.

The Ontonagon River wasn’t bridged, so a ferry had to be utilized, which
raised the price of coal from $2.50 a ton to $8.00 just because of the 4-mile journey. At the turn of the century, the mine still made no money. Something had to be done.

That something came in the form of a device called the Taylor Hydraulic Air
Compressor. In 1899 a new effort began to profitably extract the copper from Victoria. Lessons of the past made them decide that the company would be run as inexpensively as possible. The compressor would let them do that.

Building the compressor was a massive project which required a cavern be dug underground, 400 feet deep. It was a mining project unto itself. Three large shafts had to be dug to take in the water from the Ontonagon River. The tailings were pulled out by rock buckets (skips). Men would ride them in and out. At one point a cable snapped on one which fell and hit another one. It killed four men and injured several others.

The compressor worked by dropping water from the river nearly four hundred feet into the ground through three intake shafts. Large amounts of air were introduced into the water through a special apparatus containing numerous small tubes located over each intake. The countless bubbles were then released in the air chamber cut from solid rock. The air was trapped by water at both the intake and the outlet and by the solid rock of the chamber itself. The air main then bled off the compressed air from near the top of the air chamber.

Because the compressor worked solely off the river’s water, the compressed air was icy cold. It created a strange sight. Icicles would hang from the exhaust valves, and the operators had to bundle in heavy coats on hot summer days, working around the frost-covered machines. Icicles would form dozens of feet high surrounding a blow-off pipe that sprayed water and air into the sky. It was a bizarre sight that became known as the “Victoria Geyser.” Local residents recall their ancestors telling them about the geyser. The compressor still exists to this day, and some believe it is still in working order.

At one point, in 1916, the blowoff valve, a pressure release became frozen. The pressure buildup was so great that it backed up into one of the intake valves and it exploded! The force of the explosion drove a 3100 pound piece of iron up, out the shaft and destroying a building that was covering the intake.

Because of the compressor, suddenly the mine had no fuel costs. One of the mining mechanics created a compressed air locomotive to move ore to the mill on the river. As far as anyone knows it is the only one ever made. For the first time, the mine became profitable. A dam was built to direct the water into the compressor, which also still stands. The town grew and eventually thrived, becoming a company town— with the company owning the houses.

Victoria was what was known as a “Company Town.” That meant the company owned everything. They owned the houses, the company store, which led to basically, the company owning the workers. Anything needed was provided by the company and any money owed was taken directly from the paychecks. It was a great system for the company, not so much for the workers. They were underpaid making it hard for them to get out of debt.

Victoria was a good sized community with over 60 homes, church, store, and school. There were Finns, Swedes and Cornish immigrants that made up most of the town’s population. As the town grew there came a need for expansion, The school was lifted up to add an extra floor so that the lower floor became the top floor and the new one became the first floor.  It seems a little backward but it apparently worked.

Accidents and a Hard Life.

Mining isn’t an easy job and the threat of getting killed deep in some dark hole constantly loomed. Mining accidents resulting in death were not unusual and at the Victoria Mine, things were no different. 25 men lost their lives over the life of the mine. More than any others. A miner at the Victoria Mine had a 1 in 6 chance of not surviving the job. At one point, seven fatal accidents occurred in one year!

In 1907, beginning in April, accidents were frequent, too frequent. On April 4, two men were swinging picks on a rock pile when one of the men struck a drill hole which still had some blasting powder in it. Only one of them died, the one that hit the powder. On April 25, a miner was walking when his candle blew out plunging his surroundings in pitch black. He fell down a shaft in the darkness and killed.

On May 2 another man walked into a shaft, unable to see because of dust from blasting. Another accident occurred on June 1. Another miner, who had just finished his lunch, stood up and walked into a shaft. He fell 100 feet and was found on the tenth level hanging from a timber. When he was found, he was still alive, but his skull was crushed and he died shortly after.

July 19 a man had his skull crushed when he was trying to place a timber support underground. 1907 was a rough year and one of the questions was, why were the men using only candles? With the water compressor, they could have easily generated power for electric lights in the mine. They never did that and consequently they had the highest death toll by far than any other mine around. Though 1907 was a bad year, the accidents continued on throughout the years of the Victoria Mine’s operation. 1908, 1910, 1912, 1913, 1914, 1915, 1916, & 1919 all recorded fatal accidents. There were two deaths before 1907.

Some of the other fatalities occurred around the rock skip. The skip was a big bucket that ran down into the mine. It was also the only way for the miners to get down into the mine. They would ride it down to the lower levels. Occassionally it would break and fall causing someone to get killed or pieces of rock headed to the surface would fall of and kill someone. Of all the mines in the same area, Victoria had the worst acccident record. The Mass, the Adventure, the Minesota, all had better records by far with the Mass mine being closest but was still half of the fatalities of Victoria.

Along with this there were dozens of injuries. Mining was a hazardous occupation, but in Victoria the danger was downright deadly. Since the company owned the houses, if a miner was killed, the company could then displace the wife and kids and let in another family that had an able-bodied worker. Of course, a widow would be paid a stipend for their loss and were allowed a month to stay before they would be evicted.

At the end of World War I, copper prices fell, and the town began its slide into a memory. The Victoria Mine slowly shut down in the early 1920s. It was the last copper mine in the region to be still operating. The surrounding mines had shut down before it when the prices fell. Victoria operated so cheaply that they were able to outlast the others in the area, but finally the falling prices even forced them to give up. The town eventually fell to ruin, and plans were announced to burn the ruins. Some area residents would hear nothing of that.

Death and Resurrection

They formed a group called the Society for the Restoration of Old Victoria and asked that the historic homes be spared. The society has made its goal the complete restoration of the lower log locations and the marking out of the old mining building locations at the mine site. The society created hiking trails, has maintained a picnic area, and opened to the public at no charge the old homes that are undergoing restoration or have been restored. All who come to Victoria can see a bit of the
lives of those pioneer miners who lived there so long ago.

Old Victoria is believed to be one of the oldest log-cabin villages in its original location in the United States. In recent years, a history class from one of the area schools has conducted a heritage project at Old Victoria. School children actually took residence in the village, living the lives of the pioneers, thereby learning about the past through experience. Restoration is carried out by means of donations and fund-raising activities conducted by the society. Some of these are geared towards the general public and can really enhance a visit to Old Victoria. Log Cabin Day, which happens in mid-June, is one example. You can catch re-enactments and traditional cooking.

An annual craft fair held at Old Victoria is another such event; it features artists and crafts from all over. Held in August, the fair features traditionally cooked foods as well. The woodstove cooked cinnamon rolls are gaining a reputation. Artists’ tables are inexpensive.

Over the next year, the society hopes to start restoring more buildings. Campsite creation is being considered as well; currently there is none. The coming years promise to be ones of change in Old Victoria. Overwhelming scenery and special history make a visit worthwhile. The Society for the Restoration of Old Victoria is looking for any help it can get and encourages anyone to join. If you are interested in any information on Old  Victoria, its activities, or events write: Old Victoria Historical Site, 25401 Victoria Dam Rd., Rockland, Michigan 49960

For more information about Old Victoria ghost town, check out these links:

Old Victoria (U.S. National Park Service) (nps.gov)

Old Victoria Keweenaw Heritage Site| Upper Peninsula (superiortrails.com)

 Facebook Old Victoria

Check out the Victoria exploration guide and history in my first Yooper History Hunter book, Old Victoria, a Copper Country Ghost Town.  Take it with you and use the detailed map along with the history to truly explore one of Michigan’s heritage sites. Click here for the Old Victoria, Yooper History Hunter Book.

If you enjoyed this story, you might enjoy my book True Tales, the Forgotten History of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.