Editor’s note: This column is a companion to the Dec. 12 piece, “A tangle of Copper Country Railroads”

Charles A. Wright sat in his office in Hancock, thinking about railroads and trains. As the general manager of the Mineral Range Railroad, thinking about trains was an easy thing for him to do.

What was occupying his thoughts was the idea of a new railroad that would operate from the west end of Houghton to a point of junction with the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul Railroad in Ontonagon County, some sixty miles away to the southwest.

The more Wright thought about it, the more sense his idea seemed to make. At length, he invited a number of local businessmen to his office for a meeting to discuss the topic. The attending businessmen embraced the idea, and in March 1889, they organized the Northern Michigan Railroad Company.

While the new company began to survey the proposed route, Wright sought eastern investors who were more than able to financially back the venture. One of the potential investors he approached was William A. Paine.

Paine was investment banker in Boston and was a co-founder of Paine-Webber and Associates. Paine was already familiar with the area in question. His firm had an office in Houghton and like any investor, he was alert to new investment opportunities.

When Wright discussed the NMRR with Paine, Paine took immediate interest in the venture, but he also had a keen interest in the potential mineral lands through which the proposed railroad would pass. The Atlantic Mining Company had begun operating in that general area in 1871, and the Joseph Gay mining group had been exploring the area when they discovered the Baltic Copper Lode in 1882, which led to the organization of the Baltic Mining Company in 1897.

Paine wanted to gain possession of mineral lands in the area to the southwest of Portage Lake, but national economic conditions at the time made him wary of investing in such risky schemes as railroads and mineral exploration.

Conditions improved, as they often do, and Paine secured 11,500 acres of land owned by the Lake Superior Mineral Land Company, and in 1898 he organized the Copper Range Company, which purchased the rights and charters of the Northern Michigan Railroad. Paine became the president of the Copper Range Co. as well as the president of newly named Copper Range Railroad, but he retained Wright as general manager of the railroad while it was being completed.

Whether Paine was a man of ambition, a man or vision, or a high-stakes gambler is open to discussion. However one views the man, he thoroughly understood the world of corporate business.

When Paine organized the Copper Range Company in 1898, it was little more than a paper corporation, holding control of a railroad that was still under construction. The following year Paine, as president of the CR company, entered into a partnership with the St. Mary’s company and organized the Champion Copper Company, which necessitated the construction of a housing community Paine dutifully named after himself – Painesdale.

The Copper Range Company, as Paine had intended, became a holding company. The Copper Range Railroad and the Champion Copper Company became subsidiaries of the Copper Range Company, and Paine was president of all three.

The railroad, completed in 1900, entered into a contract to with the Champion mine to haul ore from its four shafts to the Champion stamp mill, requiring the construction of a branch line to Freda, where the new stamp mill was being built.

The railroad envisioned and founded by Wright, funded by Paine and other investors, and controlled by the Copper Range Company, reached the location named McKeever in 1900, where it connected with the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul Railroad. The railroad provided the opportunity to the opening of the south range of Houghton County, opened a new avenue of passenger travel, and outlived both Wright and Paine, reaching the end of its life 73 years later in 1972.

Graham Jaehnig can be reached at gjaehnig@mininggazette.com.