GRANT TOWNSHIP — Delaware Mine Tours, 12 miles south of Copper Harbor, on U.S. 41, has been welcoming visitors since July 5, 1977, when Tom Poynter and his wife, Lani, opened the mine to the public. The Poynters operated the site until September 2023, when Tom suddenly passed away. Poynter was well-known, respected and loved by the community, and for some time, there was concern over what would happen to his passion, the mine.

Concerns were relieved this year when the Delaware was purchased in January by Tom’s daughter and her husband, Laurie and Bob Sullivan.

True to Tom’s vision, a long-term goal is to create a museum of copper mining in the Copper Country, Bob said, from the prehistoric period, through the period of the development of the Delaware Mine. That’s a long history.

In June 2023, the Michigan Technological University’s Social Science Department began an archeology field school at the Delaware Mine site that is believed to have been mined out between 3,000 and 8,000 years ago.

In the period of modern history, the Delaware Mine began in 1845, making it one of the true pioneer mining ventures in the Lake Superior Copper Mining Region, just two years after the Copper Treaty of La Pointe was ratified by the U.S. Senate in 1843.

Originally, it was organized under the name Northwest Mining Association. Two years later, in March 1847, it was reorganized as the Northwest Copper Company and was reorganized yet again two years later as the North West Mining Company.

In 1861, the company was dissolved and new company, the Pennsylvania Mining Company of Michigan, was created. Two years later, in 1863, 720 acres of the west side of Pennsylvania company were separated from the company, on which was organized the Delaware Mining Company. In those early years, focus was on native copper in fissure veins located in the ancient volcanic rocks, or amygdaloid formation. Later, mining would focus on these deposits.

The Mining History Association’s report on the property states that, from the 1860s to the 1880s, a number of new companies were formed to raise capital for continuing mine development. Several of the companies and mines had names reflecting their eastern investors, the Pennsylvania Mining Company (1861), the Delaware Mining Company (1863), a new Delaware Mining Company (1876) consolidating the older Pennsylvania and Delaware companies, and finally the Conglomerate Mining Company (1881). By the 1880s, the Conglomerate Mining Company had developed an extensive mining complex, employee houses and a school at the town of Delaware.

Tours are available daily from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.