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Circa 1905. "Calumet and Hecla smelters, Lake Linden, Michigan." Starting point for the web of copper telephone and streetcar wires seen in so many of the other Detroit Publishing images. Panorama of two 8x10 glass plates. View full size.
The upper peninsula (UP) is SO FAR north!!
I spend a lot of time in the UP, but this always surprises me:
565 miles = distance Detroit MI to Lake Linden MI
525 miles = distance Detroit MI to Washington DC
Any idea what the poles, probably wood or metal, that are found on the top of virtually all chimneys on the right side? Would these be some kind of dampers or screens to catch hot embers?
It looks like the horse is standing on Standard Gauge track, while the track just to the right and most of the rest of this is narrow gauge (3' or maybe 42") The line that runs from front to back on the right side of the photo also looks standard gauge, with the narrow gauge crossing it.
I -think- the carts dead center of the photo capture the smelted copper, and it's one of those smelted pieces that's being loaded into the horse-drawn car. A pile of them appear to the left. The narrow gauge man-powered car is probably dumping clinker into the piles at the very right of the photo. I don't know what the framework is on that side of the photo, perhaps to support a means to load clinkers from the bins off-photo to the right onto cars on that standard gauge track beneath the wood framing in the picture.
The stone buildings may in part be a result of the need for structures that can survive extreme cold and high snow loadings. The roofing is probably corrugated iron. Smelters are nasty, they produce a lot of acid smoke. I'm surprised there are trees in the background.
This photo was taken on that day called "summer" in the Upper Peninsula.
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