"old ish"

Today we took a look around Ishpeming or "Old Ish." The word ishpeming is an Ojibwa Indian word for "air," "up there," or "sky."  It is the home of the Cliffs Mine and the National Ski Hall of Fame Museum, as well as the Iron Ore Workers Museum.  Oh, and of course, Da Yoopers famous tourist trap.  We did see some random things along the way such as the bride on the motorcycle and the snow shovel wielding semi truck, but sadly, we did not get our cameras out fast enough to document the old man with white hair, pot belly, black speedo, white socks and black shoes walking along the road. 

http://dayoopers.com/

 We decided to take a tour of the Cliffs Mine and it was really amazing to see.  The back breaking work and the significant risks these people took each day with their lives and their potential for catastrophic injuries each day underscored everything we saw.  We even had a tug on the old heartstrings when we learned there were mules that were kept down in the mines for their entire lives. Once they went down into the mine, they never came out, ever.  It was said that the mules would lose their eyesight and eventually go completely blind due in a year due to the lack of sunlight and that they would know every tunnel in the mine by heart.  They, along with their human workers, averaged 11 hours per day shifts. This mine was what they called a wet mine and the water (as you know it rains incessantly up here) would just run from the ground down into the mines so much so that the workers clothes were completely soaked with water by the end of their work day.  They had "dry rooms" for them to take their wet work clothes off and change into dry clothes before they went home. 

They had to work in the dark, of course, and had to light candles on their hats back when the mine first opened.  Sometime later on, they had head lamps.  The potential for disaster was at every turn.  The blasting caps and dynamite would self ignite from static electricity or the mines would flood and kill the miners, the ore would drop off the ceilings and crush them or even the mules would lose their footing going down hill pulling carts of ore and lose their little mule lives.  The ore itself is significantly heavy, if pieces broke off in the blasting process, the miners would lose body parts or their lives.   Miners would literally go in the mine each morning:  shovel, drill and blast, put the ore in the carts and do that all over again for 11 hours straight. Go back up to the top, dry off and do it all over again the next day for 75 cents a day.  They did this  for forty years straight, if they lived that long.  It is said that 4 generations of families worked in that mine before it eventually closed.  Since the ore mine was the only source of revenue in the area for hundreds of miles, there was a waiting line of new workers who would quickly be put in place for the miners who lost their lives.  
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Now! On to the National Ski Museum!  It was filled with all aspects of skiing: downhill, cross country and ski jumping! There is a ski jump in Ishpeming called "suicide hill" where many of Michigan's Olympic ski jumpers trained!