Minong Mine

Minong Mine is a backcountry copper-mining site reached by a spur from the Minong Ridge Trail near McCargoe Cove. It sits in a historic district of more than 200 acres, with ancient mining pits and later company remains spread across a much larger area than one mine entrance. Go if you're already planning a remote hike and want to understand Isle Royale's human history; it's not a quick stop or an interpreted mine tour. The exact spur endpoint and which remains it reaches aren't documented, so think of this as a historic landscape rather than a guaranteed visit inside a mine.

The spur branches near the start of the 6.7-mile Minong Ridge section between McCargoe Cove and Todd Harbor. That's the whole trail leg, not a distance estimate for the mine spur, which has no separately published mileage. The trail is rocky and rooty, with steep climbs and slick rocks when wet. This is the least challenging part of the Minong Ridge Trail, but it's still remote; carry a map and compass and know how to use them.

Passenger ferry access to McCargoe Cove requires advance reservations. The cove can also be reached by canoe, kayak or private boat, or by a 1.2-mile portage from Chickenbone Lake. No food or water service is documented at the mine spur, so plan for a backcountry stop and carry what you need.

Minong is an Ojibwe word for Isle Royale. Indigenous people mined copper here at least 4,500 years ago, and the district holds one of the largest, most thoroughly studied concentrations of ancient mining pits found. The more-than-200-acre historic district also includes the McCargoe Cove occupation site and remains of the old village of Cove, so the story reaches well beyond the later company mine.

Three companies formed in Detroit in 1874 to work the island's copper deposits, but only the Minong Mining Company operated. It began serious work in 1875. In its first operating year, the settlement had six dwellings, a store, an office and 50 employees. A dock and warehouse at McCargoe Cove linked lake steamers to a two-mile route into the mine settlement, served by a tug and flatboats.

The company mostly quarried open pits, though it sank two shafts, one 300 feet deep. It built a steam-powered stamp mill using water from a 12-foot log dam on a Chickenbone Creek tributary. Production declined after 1879 as lower-grade rock proved uneconomic, and the mine closed in 1885.