If the Calumet and Hecla Mining Company was alone in its location in its early days, it would not be for long, and it was the same man who located the Calumet Conglomerate Lode who saw to it.

When Edwin Hulbert located the lode, he was surveying the road between the Cliff Mine and Hancock, and he was working from east to west, then north to south. Hulbert first opened the Schoolcraft Mine in 1863, but went bankrupt in 1873. Purchased by new owners, the Schoolcraft became the Centennial Mining Company.

We’ve already discussed his involvement in the Calumet Mine, and his being ousted from his position there in 1867. Now, we must remember that while Hulbert was an excellent civil engineer and surveyor, he was no mining engineer and he failed horribly when he attempted mining. But it must also be said that as an excellent civil engineer, who had been taught geology by some of the best in the Lake Superior copper region, he knew the Calumet Lode, end for end, probably better than anyone else at that time. In the early 1870s, he began searching for investors and in 1873, he organized the Osceola Mining Company to work the southern extension of the Calumet Conglomerate Lode. The lode, it turned out, was richest at the northern end of the Osceola property, but as it was opened to the south, it became worthless. Six shafts had been sunk on the conglomerate, but the Number 1, 600 feet south of the Hecla property line, alone was any value.

Much to the company’s good fortune, just 800 feet to the east of the Calumet lode, an amygdaloid belt was discovered, with the company opened in 1877, which soon permitted the Osceola to become the second most important copper producer, second only to C&H.

John Daniell, superintendent of the Osceola, came up with a plan by which to exploit the Calumet Conglomerate from property west of the C&H property. To do this, the Bigelow-Clark group, who owned the Osceola, organized the Tamarack Mining Company. Daniell’s plan was to sink a vertical shaft almost a half-mile deep, to the level at which the shaft would intersect the lode just west of it where it crossed into Tamarack property.

What all this translated into, of course, was population. With each new mining company came a new mining location, the residential area where those who worked for the company rented homes owned by the company, except the village of Red Jacket.

In 1880, the population of Red Jacket had reached 2,140. By 1890, it had risen to 3,073, and by 1900, had increased again, to 4,668 people. Organized in 1873, the mining location of Osceola had jumped to 1,413 by 1890. Tamarack Location had reached 768, by 1890.

The area around the C&H Mining Company continued to grow. The Tecumseh Mining Company was organized in March, 1880, and owns 480 acres of land, lying southwest from the Osceola and adjoining it. Two shafts were sunk on this property: one to reach the Calumet conglomerate lode, and the other to exploit the Osceola Amygdaloid. Tecumseh, too, would have its own residential location, but it mingled with the southern reaches of Opeechee.

In 1887, Osceola was renamed Opeechee, for some reason or other. Though never incorporated as a village, Opeechee boasted a Methodist church, post office, printer, news agency, meat market, physician, general store, and the Osceola Consolidated Mining Co., which had merged with the Opeechee Mining Company.

Of all of these locations, including Osceola, Tamarack, Yellow Jacket, Blue Jacket, Hecla, Calumet, and the others, only Red Jacket was an incorporated village with a council government and defined village ordinances. And yet, with a total population of 25,991, Calumet Township, in which locations stood, was amazingly crime free. That is not to say there were no petty crimes or misdemeanors, but felonious crimes, like murder, rape, and etcetera were very few and far between.

The residents of all these locations seemed to get along with not great conflict, but the boards of directors of these companies were losing the spirit of the frontier and were gradually becoming more 20th century in their attitudes and thinking. Those attitudes would boil over in the early decades of the 20th century, until C&H became a cut-throat corporation and put the smaller, independent mines on a short leash. But, that is for an upcoming coffee session.

Graham Jaehnig has a BA of Social Science/History from Michigan Technological University, and an MA in English/Creative Nonfiction Writing from Southern New Hampshire University. He is internationally known for his writing on Cornish immigration to the United States mining districts.