The decade beginning in 1970 marked the start of hard change and adjustment for the Copper Country.

In 1969, Universal Oil Products, which now owned the former Calumet and Hecla company, terminated its company’s employees after a strike of several months. The strike, which had begun in August, 1968, ended the last mining of native copper in the Lake Superior copper region.

In 1970, UOP stopped the dewatering pumps in the Centennial and Kingston mines. The announcement was a public declaration that the nearly 125 years of copper mining on the Keweenaw Peninsula was now dead.

With the closure of mines, shaft houses and machinery buildings were destroyed for scrap iron, railroads, no longer needed, removed their tracks and scrapped their cars.

In the Portage Lake District the removal of landmarks, had begun years before with the liquidation of the Isle Royale Copper Company in 1949. The Isle Royale mine, operating between Hurontown and Dodgeville, suspended all operations in December, 1948. Its 50-year-old short line, five mile-long railroad operated between its mill, at the mouth of the Pilgrim River, on Portage Lake and Dodgeville briefly in 1949, with the tracks being removed that year. Surface buildings along the shafts were also razed. The company’s No. 1 shaft surface plant, near what is now Sharon Avenue, in Houghton, was demolished in 1908.

Removal of icons and landmarks continued in the spring of 1971. During the summer, the Copper Range Company removed 13 miles of Copper Range Railroad track of the “Freda Branch,” between Freda and Mill Mine Junction which, at its peak, saw 100 trains pass, in four directions, per day.

The Copper Range Railroad had already abandoned its line from Lake Linden to Calumet in 1964, when on June 30, the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) approved the line’s abandoning its trackage north of Lake Linden, some 33 percent of its trackage.

The Freda Branch had also served the Baltic Mining Company’s stamp mill, at Redridge, on the west side of the Salmon Trout River, in Stanton Township; the Adventure company’s mill, at Edgemere, about a mile west of Redridge; and the Trimountain company’s mill, at Beacon Hill. The mill at Edgemere had been torn down in 1939. Along with the tracks along the Freda Branch, the Edgemere trestle, an engineering marvel was dynamited, knocked down and scrapped, as was the Beacon Hill trestle, which surrendered some 310 tons of salvageable iron.

Also during that summer, the Champion mine’s mill, in Freda, the buildings were demolished for the purpose of accessing the facility’s iron, steel, machinery, piping, and anything else of scrap value.

In September, 1971, the Stanton Township Board made the decision to construct a new elementary school, abandoning the two-story wooden school in Redridge that was built in 1905. In December, 1972, with the opening of the Earl B. Holman School, in Liminga, the Redridge school was closed. The Redridge school was built at a time when the community’s population numbered more than 1,000. In 1957, the Copper Range Company tore down many abandoned homes in the community. The Copper Range Company, like the rest of the mining district, continued to whither.

On October 27, 1972, the Copper Range Railroad suspended all operations, having received authorization from the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) to abandon all of its remaining trackage. The entire line was officially abandoned in March, 1973, and the railroad went out of existence. The tracks and trestles were removed in 1973 and 1974, and sold for scrap. The former main branch, between Houghton and Rockland, was donated to the Michigan Department of Natural Resources to be used as recreational trails. The former main branch is now the Bill Nichols Trail.

On the “North End,” along with the removal of railroad tracks, iconic landmarks such as C&H shaft houses and surface plants, were razed for their scrap iron value. By 1970, the removals were common. For example, in 1966, the Centennial Mining Company’s No. 2 shaft/rockhouse was toppled and sold for scrap the same year the shaft was closed. In 1943, the Red Jacket shaft house, along with its hoist and other machinery, was removed during a World War II scrap drive.

After The C&H mines were permanently closed in 1970, Calumet Township began the long process of moving from a corporate controlled property to a self-sustaining township.

In the early 1970s, the township, under supervisor Paul Lehto’s leadership, the township platted 1,500 property lots, enabling residents to purchase their homes and leased lots from UOP.

Calumet Township also organized the North Houghton County Water and Sewage Authority, in 1972, to consolidate those services. Previously, the three villages in the township, Calumet, Laurium and Copper City, operate their own sewer systems, while other systems were owned by individual water companies.

The Hecla Mining Company’s fire station became the Calumet Township Fire Department Hall.

While organizations like UOP sought to develop an industry based on heritage tourism, mining companies were demolishing mine sites for the scrap iron they contained.

At the Quincy mine location, most of the houses disappeared. Several houses in the neighborhood of Lower Pewabic were dismantled and reconstructed elsewhere, including South Range.

The landscape changed. As more and more buildings were removed, the Copper Country began to lose more of its physical identity.

In Painesdale, Copper Range demolished most of the Champion mine buildings for scrap iron, with the exception of the No. 4 or D shaft. In 1925, an underground aquifer was discovered on the second level of the No. 4 shaft, which was used to provide fresh water for the towns and locations along the “south range,” as well as Houghton and Hancock. When the Champion suspended mining operations in 1967, Copper Range donated the surface plant of the No. 4 shaft to Adams Township in order to continue supplying water. Adams Township Adams Township then maintained mine’s the hoist, retained a hoist operator, the shaft and the man car, to lower and raise men maintaining the water pumps on the 3rd level.

While the once iconic mine location buildings were quickly disappearing from the Copper Country landscape, thousands of former company employees left the region of employment, and lives, for other regions. Not only was the Copper Country losing its identity, it was losing its identifiers.