An ancient vanished race mined native copper hundreds of years ago in countless pits and trenches scattered among the hills from Copper Harbor to Ontonagon and on Isle Royale. In 1536, Jacques Cartier reported that Indians on the St. Lawrence River told him of great hills of native copper far to the west. Father Claude Allouez was the first white man to report seeing copper along the south shore of Lake Superior in 1666. In 1771, a company organized in London, England, sent an unsuccessful expedition to these shores to mine copper. A treaty between the U.S. Government and the Chippewa Indians on March 12th 1843 opened the district to mining. During the succeeding years, mines were discovered that for two generations produced a large percentage of the world’s copper. The first successful mine was the Cliff Mine near Phoenix on U.S. 41, started in 1844. The Conglomerate Lode at Calumet produced over 4,000,000,000 pounds of copper and paid over $160,000,000 in dividends. Along U.S. 41 and M-26 lay many ghost mines tied to the hopes, ambitions, and fortunes of a tough and hardy group of pioneers.