Began → Colby Mine → Became
Operated for
From: 1884
Owned by: Puritan Mining Company, then Corrigan McKinney Steel Co.; then Republic Steel Corp.
Produced: Iron Ore
Method: Underground and open pit.
Railroad connection: C&NW and Soo Line to Port of Ashland
Until: 1923
Lifetime Production: 5,573,051 tons
Image Info: Top, an early view of the Colby Mine near Bessemer. [MINARC]. 2nd image, a switch engine pushes ore cars to the load in at the Colby Mine in 1886. [Bessemer Area Historical Society].
Includes Tilden Mine until 1891.
The Colby Mine was located at Bessemer in Gogebic County. It was an underground mine, owned by the Puritan Mining Company, and then Pickands Mather and Company. Includes the Tilden Mine until 1891.
Owned at one point by the McKinney Steel Company. [IOI]
1892. As a load of 20 men was going down No. 7 shaft of the Colby mine, the cage when midway down 250 feet from the bottom dropped the entire distance. William Ryan, the brakeman, took charge of the drum as the cage shot into the shaft, and before he fully realized the distance the cage had run, it had dropped on to the heavy sollar (sic) with a crash. Ryan took to the woods, thinking he had killed every man on the cage. The accident was a disastrous one, but fortunately no lives were lost. Fifteen of the occupants sustained eighteen broken arms or legs, scalp wounds and contusions. [INR2-18792-1022]
1894. September 18. A very bad accident occurred on the Colby mine location in Bessemer. As switch engine No. 74 of the Wisconsin Central was rounding the sharp curve near No. 5 shaft, backing up and pulling a string of ore cars, a cow came up out of the bushes onto the track so close that the engineer had to stop. The engine's tender struck her and the result was the locomotive was derailed with three cars. The cars were smashed into kindling wood, and the engine turned bottom up down the steep bank, and was a complete wreck. Engineer John Kafer was found under the wreck horribly mangled and dead. His fireman, Pat Scheffler, was thrown down the bank into the bushes and came out with only a broken leg. Kafer was considered one of the most careful engineers in the employ of the company and a man liked by all. [Colby Photograph, 1894-0927]
