Before 1840, rumors of copper deposits along the North Shore's hills and streams drew mineral prospectors. After the 1854 Treaty of La Pointe, the Ojibwe people reluctantly ceded their territories to the United States, opening the land between Fond du Lac and the Canadian border to European settlement. Prospectors then poured into the region to stake claims, and in 1855 Clifton became the first town to be platted at the mouth of the Talmadge River near present-day McQuade Harbor, positioned for an expected copper boom. When sufficient minerals were never found, Clifton became a ghost town that existed only on paper, and nearby towns such as Montezuma, Buchanan, and Agate Bay met the same fate. By 1870, a railway linking Duluth to St. Paul markets created a boom in North Shore commercial fishing, and many Ojibwe people fished commercially on Lake Superior.