These are some of the company houses built in the Ishpeming area. (Journal photo by Abby LaForest)

ISHPEMING — In 1879 the Iron Cliffs Mining Company began to sink two shafts for a new mine, which was called the New Barnum mine. Previous diamond drilling (a diamond drill produced a core sample) had shown there was a sizable ore body under parts of the city of Ishpeming and the ore itself was an iron rich specular hematite.

Two shafts meant the mine would be able to produce about two hundred tons of ore per day, since there were two shafts to haul the ore to the surface.

The A shaft went down easily but the B shaft ran into quicksand just a short distance from the surface. Lake Bancroft was close, and the B shaft was at a lower elevation than the A shaft. In 1879, the new mine lacked a mining captain with enough experience to handle the problem and a pump strong enough to remove the water from the quicksand, so the mining company decided to focus attention solely on the A shaft.

Once the pumps in the A shaft started working, the wells in the Strawberry Hills part of town ran dry and households had to go to the A shaft for their water. It was a nuisance in the summer, but in the winter, it was dangerous and at least one person broke their leg when trying to fill the water buckets.

By December 1880 the shaft was finished, and miners started their work. The Iron Cliffs Company had purchased the Pioneer Furnaces in Negaunee and all ore they mined at any of their mines went to the furnace to be turned into charcoal pig iron.

Sometime in 1884-1885 B shaft was finished and began to produce iron ore as well. In about 1887, the New Barnum mine was renamed Cliffs Shaft, the name it holds today.

When Iron Cliffs first incorporated in 1864, pig iron was selling for a good price due to the immense need for iron. Pig iron was cheap to produce, at first, when lumber was close at hand and could be easily turned into the charcoal needed for the blast furnace. So the Iron Cliffs Company decided to base their business model on converting the raw iron ore to charcoal pig iron and selling that.

After the war, however, demand for any type of pig iron lessened and advancements in the making of steel meant blast furnaces preferred the raw ore, so they could smelt it to their specifications. The price paid for charcoal pig iron plummeted and costs began to rise, as lumber needed to be hauled from ever increasing distances once nearby trees were cut down. The Iron Cliffs Company was in trouble and in 1890, the Iron Cliffs Company and the Cleveland Iron Mining Company merged, forming the Cleveland Iron Mining Company.

Cliffs Shaft continued to produce high quality specular hematite. The A and B shaft headframes were replaced in 1919 with the concrete obelisks that continue to grace our skyline. In 1955 the C shaft was built. In 1967 the decision was made to close the mine. The ore body was gone, and underground mining was expensive. Advancements in the beneficiation of iron ore meant the lower quality ore of the Empire, Tilden and Republic mines could be mined cheaper and easier from an open pit.

It took about two years to clear the stockpile of iron, and the mine produced over 26 million tons of iron ore over its lifetime. Today the Cliffs Shaft property is a museum with tours in the summertime.