Cliff Mine — Attraction in Allouez Township

The Cliff mine was the first successful copper mine in the Copper Country of the state of Michigan in the United States. The mine is at the now-abandoned town of Clifton in Keweenaw County. Mining began in 1845, and the Cliff was the most productive copper mine in the United States from 1845 through 1854. Large-scale mining stopped in 1878. The Pittsburgh and Boston Copper Harbor Mining Company and its successor the Pittsburgh and Boston Mining Company operated the Cliff mine from 1845 to 1870, then sold the property to the Cliff Copper Company in 1871. The Cliff Copper Company operated the mine from 1872 to 1878. The combined dividends paid by the companies was $2.5 million. The mine was then leased to tributers, who continued minor copper production through 1887. Total production was 38.2 million pounds of refined copper. The Tamarack Mining Company bought the Cliff property and did extensive subsurface exploration from 1903 to 1908, but did not find any new ore bodies worth mining. The Cliff Mine was 1,080 feet deep and produced 825 tons of copper in 1875. The town was settled around 1844 & it's peak population was...

This museum and mine tour was excellent!!! The mine itself is inaccessible because it filled with water when they stopped mining and pumping out the water. But history on the tour and the artifacts in the museum are fascinating!!! I highly recommend the tour as Mike, the tour guide, actually worked in the mine and provided detailed descriptions of how things worked. There was no discussion of accidents and I think this was by design. But if you asked, Mike could answer. Visit this museum and support them with your ticket purchase. It’s a worthy...

We have come here many times over the years, and we always find something new. There is a Cliff Drive Lookout, but we have never managed to get up there. We hear it takes 4x4, and we had a Jeep Grand Cherokee, but we decided not to go up that road. We did cross the littler river though!

Take your time here. There is a cemetery (and lots of poison ivy), there are a few walls, and remains of this old mining village, but not much. There is a chimney, and a few other things. The rock formations here...