Throughout the summer, Copper Harbor is inundated with visitors from across and nation. In fact, it is categorized as a prime tourist destination. Yet, of the thousands who visit the little, unofficial, town, very few are aware that it’s been a prime destination for nearly 200 years. The lure was not its pristine beauty, or mountain bike trails, or restaurants; it was copper.

In October, 1842, western Upper Michigan was included in the land to be ceded by the Ojibway at the treaty of La Pointe. The treaty was ratified by Congress in March, 1843 and by June, Keweenaw Point was already seeing an influx of people. They were waiting for the arrival of the special agent of the U.S. War Department, Walter Cunningham, who would oversee the mineral lands. Cunningham arrived in Copper Harbor on June 10, 1843, named the large island Porter’s Island, in honor of the Secretary of War, and had the mineral land agency constructed on its western end. Just two weeks later, others arrived only to find still others were already there.

On June 24, 1843, George Mseersmith composed a letter which he sent to the Democratic Free Press, in Detroit, in August, in which he described the scene at Copper Harbor when he arrived on the schooner Algonquin. He also described the famous copper vein near where the lighthouse stands. It was this vein that attracted explorers and scientists since the early 1830s.

“On our arrival here, we found nine tents, averaging six to a tent, which makes quite a society. We went yesterday to Houghton’s large copper vein, which terminates on Keweenaw Point; the vein is 18 feet wide as described in Houghton’s report, but I had almost forgotten to say that it consists of stone verdigris and spar, and the black oxide of copper, but so largely impregnated with the former of these ingredients as to be totally worthless for practical purposes. We put a blast of powder into it, and threw up about a ton of the common mass, out of which we were able to realize the existence of copper in the substance of black oxide.”

Messersmith went on to report: “Several companies are this morning trying to organize to cut a road or path to the highlands. Small parties tried to make the hills but have failed in consequence of the white cedar swamps they had to encounter in this vicinity.”

A month before, a man named Raymond had visited Keweenaw Point and obtained mineral land leases in Washington D.C. One lease, Lease Number 4, embraced Copper Harbor, which became the location of the Pittsburgh & Boston Copper Harbor Mining Company. Mining explorations began on the eastern arm of the harbor in the spring of 1844 under the direction of an experienced coal mine developer from Ohio, named John Hays, a director of the company.

“This was the first location which was made after the extinguishment of the Indian title, in 1843,” the 1849 annual report of the company reported, “and attention was especially attracted to it in consequence of an extraordinary “Green Rock,” composed of hydrous silicate of copper, situated immediately at the entrance of the Harbor, and long familiar to early voyageurs–.

“A party of miners under the direction of an intelligent head were accordingly set to work in the summer of 1844 on the vein supposed to carry the silicate of copper, at two several points, and shafts were sunk to the depth of 40 and 60 feet, developing what in mining parlance might be considered ‘fair prospects,’ but without producing any mineral of sufficient richness to be worked to advantage.”

When Hays and his miners arrived at the harbor, they found Captain Robert Cleary, commanding two companies of soldiers from the Fifth Infantry division clearing and leveling land for the construction of Fort Wilkins. Another copper deposit was discovered near the fort and the annual report states: “A party, consisting of about 30 men, supplied with provisions and all the implements and munitions for regular mining operations, under the immediate management of one of the Trustees (William Pettit), arrived on the ground by the first vessel which left the Sault Ste. Marie after the opening of navigation.”

Pettit later recorded that while he resided at Copper Harbor, from April, 1845 to June, 1846, there was a total of 70 people living at the site.

“But perhaps, more than all the celebrated “green rock” of ‘voyageurs’ as the French and Indian boatmen, are called, which stood out of the water several feet at the lower entrance to Copper harbor, attracting the attention of the scientific,” Pettit wrote two years later, “became the subject of analyses, and proved to silicious oxide and carbonate of copper, rich in metal.”

A year later, in 1846, a mining engineer named John H. Forster arrived on Keweenaw Point, which he later described. “During the lively summer of 1846, several thousand people must have arrived at Copper Harbor, — distinguished strangers from many lands, politicians, scientific men, speculators, surveyors and engineers, down to the humble voyageur and packer,” Forster wrote.

“The birch woods in the vicinity of Ft. Wilkins underwent a great transformation, and a lively town of white tents gleamed out of the green groves. It was an improvised metropolitan city ; men from many nations were covered by its canvas and made merry beside the clear waters of the Great Lake. Card playing, the use of the ‘flowing bowl’ and some good fighting with fist and pistol were the social amusements of this conglomerate community. But this was only when there was nothing better to do — while waiting for fair winds, or for the action of the authorities at the Government House; or after a return from a hard exploring expedition. In that wild time and country the restraints of civilization sat loosely on men, and it was a common saying that there was no Sunday west of the Sault.”

Mining had petered out in Copper Harbor by 1846. But its natural beauty continued to attract tourists. Fort Wilkins, long abandoned, had become a popular picnic and camping destination in the early 1920s as automobiles rapidly became the new mode of transportation. In the 1930s, the Copper Country Vacationist League started publishing promotional material that further increased tourism in and around Copper Harbor.

Thousands of people visit Copper Harbor every summer. Many of them unaware of the people and their activities that carved the area out of the wilderness to find copper, only to create a premier tourists destination it is today.