The Pioneer Blast Furnace in Negaunee is pictured. (Photo courtesy of the Negaunee Historical Society)

NEGAUNEE — The Pioneer blast furnace of Negaunee was the most famous of all blast furnaces that operated in the Upper Peninsula. It was said to have been the first actual blast furnace in Michigan.

A small settlement sprang up in the furnace location and it became known as Pioneer, after the furnace, or by the Indian word, “Negani” which loosely translates means pioneer or one who goes on ahead. This furnace was separated from the Jackson mine by about a mile. it was several years before the two locations began growing together.

The first store in Negaunee was said to have been opened by the Pioneer Company in 1859, at the east of town. Then Mr. Hamlin built a store to the west to cash in on the Jackson Mine workers. 

Back in 1857 when the iron industry of the Superior region was in its infancy, a young man by the name of Stephen Gay arrived in Marquette from Little Rock, Massachusetts, to supervise the erection of the Pioneer furnace at Negaunee for the old Iron Cliffs Company. The fact that this plant was called Pioneer caused some controversy because the word Pioneer would cause one to believe that it was the first furnace in the region. It was not the first; there was Collinsville and Forestville near Marquette but they were considered to be small and were crude operations with no big stacks.

Gay had only been in Negaunee for two weeks when a conversation took place that revolutionized the iron industry in the Lake Superior region. Gay was a hard, conscientious worker. He was never seen anywhere except at the furnace site. One day he walked over to the Jackson Iron Company, which was located a stone’s throw from where his men were working, and struck up a conversation with Captain Henry Merry, the mine superintendent and manager of the property.

The two men spent several hours inspecting the workings and were engaged in conversation just outside of the office. Prior to Gay’s departure, he looked toward several big heaps of yellowish red material and asked Captain Merry,” How much ore have you got in those stockpiles?” Captain Merry  replied,“ore? That’s not ore. That’s what we call “paintrock.” “It’s a sort of red clay mixed with sand and rock, and it’s so plentiful that we don’t know where to dump the stuff after we get it out. I’ve built roads with it, filled in sink holes and ravines but we don’t seem to be able to get rid of it.”

Gay did not continue his conversation but the next day he entered into a contract with the Jackson Company to pay 50 cents a ton for all the iron he would extract from the “paintrock.” The contract gave Gay’s company 20 years to remove the so-called paintrock. The Jackson Iron Company, none of its men, nor anyone in the distict for that matter except Gay himself, had any idea that there was iron in the paintrock and they thought Gay made a poor deal.

But that paintrock proved to be almost the richest ore ever mined on the Marquette Range. It wasn’t the richest but it was assayed on an average of 60 to 65 percent in metallic iron. The contract made with Gay cost the Jackson Iron Company many thousands of dollars, but it also showed the Jackson company a way to make additional thousands in soft ore mining. At that time there was just hard ore mining in the Lake Superior region. Nothing was known about soft ore, or what is known as hematite ore.

The amount of hematite that Gay bought for the Iron Cliffs Company from the Jackson Company is not known, but is known that it was thousands of tons. The so-called paintrock was so plentiful that the Jackson company built many roads and filled many holes, some as deep as 50 feet, until Mr. Gay came to town.

At the turn of the century, Cleveland Cliffs was expanding through its railroads and timberlands and the company decided to build its Pioneer Furnace No.2 in Marquette in 1901. The company had also taken over the operation of the old Carp River furnace just north of the prison in Marquette and it was called a Pioneer Iron Company project. The Pioneer Blast furnace that started in Negaunee ended in Marquette.