The details surrounding Timothy’s O’Shea’s decision to quit the Cliff Mine when he did may never be accurately known. But trying to uncover O’Shea’s reasons may shed a bit of light on why other miners moved around from mine to mine frequently. After all, they were independent contractors and were free to leave one company for another at any time. But in the case of O’Shea, the timing of his actions is what is intriguing.

According to company policy, when a worker, including O’Shea, quit the company, he had to quit the house he rented, which was only available to him so long as he worked there. Very few men voluntarily quit their job, gave up their house and moved to a new location a dozen miles away — in the dead of winter — but that’s just what O’Shea did. He left the Cliff, left Clifton, left his new wife with relatives (probably her parents; she was 17 years old in 1865), and relocated to the new Calumet Mine Location.

O’Shea himself may have provided at least something of a clue. He was the subject of an article in the July 6, 1916 edition of the Calumet News in which he stated he recalled a strike that occurred at the Cliff Mine “more than half a century ago when all the men quit because Capt. Gundry and his bosses were laid off.” That was just after the Civil War, O’Shea remembered. In the article, O’Shea went on to state that Gundry got his way and he and his bosses were rehired. O’Shea’s recounting of events from so long before leave room for doubt and confusion. If O’Shea was among those who quit in protest, why did he not return to work after the strike? Perhaps he had already moved on before the strike was settled. Or maybe, after more than 50 years, his memory was not clear.

There were two mining captains at the Cliff Mine named John Gundry, a father and son. According to the History of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, published in 1883, the father arrived in Eagle River in June 1851, and went to work at the Cliff. However, he subsequently left and went to Pewabic Mine, in the Portage Lake District, where he died in October 1864, the third year of the Civil War, and more than a year before O’Shea left the Cliff.

The younger Gundry, who also became a captain at the Cliff, studied to become a mining engineer and in 1862, the second year of the Civil War, left to work as a machinist at Franklin Mine, adjacent to Pewabic Mine.

While O’Shea’s memory proved faulty with timelines regarding both Gundrys, they both left around the time that Percival Updegraff was promoted from chief clerk at the Cliff to superintendent, replacing James Watson, who was appointed superintendent of the North Cliff Mine, according to the History of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, in 1863. There is documentation to suggest that Updegraff created tensions with employees at the Cliff. Mining engineer Joseph Rawlings, who designed the man engine at the Cliff left the mine because of his inability to get to along with Updegraff.

Faulty memory or not, the items O’Shea recalled probably contributed largely to his leaving the Cliff. His father’s death in the mine in 1865 was most likely just the breaking point for him and he went to see Edwin Hulbert at the Calumet site.

In the same July 6 interview, O’Shea stated he was well-acquainted with Hulbert; probably he was. Hulbert was employed at the Cliff when O’Shea was there. Alfred P. Swinefort, in his book History and review of the copper, iron, silver, slate and other material interests of the south shore of Lake Superior, states Hulbert engineered the mine’s perpendicular Avery Shaft, which O’Shea would have known about and may have been involved in the shaft’s construction. Avery Shaft was constructed as a hoisting shaft in 1858, just before Hulbert received a contract to survey a 60-mile section of the planned State Mineral Range Road that would begin in Copper Harbor and end in Rockland. Hulbert’s section was between Copper Harbor and Hancock, on Portage Lake. It was most likely this road that O’Shea took from Clifton to the Calumet location.

According to historical record, while employed at the Cliff, Hulbert mapped out roads and streets, platted the growing Clifton location, platted the cemetery that later became the Evergreen and similar tasks. He became an ardent student of mining geology under some of the most veteran Lake Superior geologists, including Samuel W. Hill, Charles Whittlesy and William Stevens. He must have been an excellent student because he used the education he had obtained from them in discovering the Calumet Lode. Because Hulbert was nearly always visible on the Cliff properties, and by many accounts was friendly and outgoing, it is indeed probable that as he later said, O’Shea had a fair acquaintance with him when he sought work from him in winter 1865.

According to a 15-page document titled The Founding of the Calumet & Hecla Mine, 1866-1916, Hulbert sank the first shaft (later became the Calumet No. 4 Shaft) in August 1864. The document is most likely written by James N. Wright, who at one time was the superintendent at C&H.

Whatever else Hulbert did between 1864 and the summer of 1866 is, really, unclear, because what few records exist are unclear and to some degree contradict each other, and does not pertain to our story as that period was before O’Shea arrived in December, 1865. According to the Calumet & Hecla Mining Co. semi-centennial publication, O’Shea’s official start date at Calumet was Jan. 1, 1866.

There is one point that the semi-centennial publication emphasized that sought to dispel a myth that still circulates today, that tells a story of the Calumet Lode was discovered by pigs.

“There has been so much published regarding the facts and fancies of the early days of the Calumet & Hecla,” the publication states on page 13, “and so much nonesense, such as the copper discovery by Billy Royal’s pig, that we decided in this little work the real facts.”

If the reports subsequently written are accurate, what O’Shea encountered at Calumet must have caused at least some degree of confusion.

“Large open pits on the lode were made which could not be continued for any depth and which would only permit limited output,” states The Founding of the Calumet & Hecla. “An attempt was made to smelt the rock; when that failed Mr. Hulbert leased a mill in Hancock, bought one hundred teams of horses and proceeded to haul the rock in wagons about thirteen miles.”

The publication goes on to state that “the hard, tenacious and finely subdivided conglomerate was found to be a very difficult thing to mine and mill from any rocks hitherto worked in the district.”

O’Shea probably thought so, too. In the mines at Allihies, back in Ireland, the ore was copper sulfide and, according to the Allihies Copper Mine Museum, the host rock was predominantly red sandstones and siltstones. At the Cliff and most of the other Lake Superior copper region mines, the primary rock was basalt. Conglomerate was a whole other type of rock.

Whatever O’Shea’s early impressions of things at the Calumet Location, he must have really believed in the mine’s future, because he stayed on, even during the period when there were no houses on the property.