Photo: "Recorded in Stone: Voices on the Marquette Iron Range." Cen, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
Philo M. Everett was a businessman from Jackson, Michigan. In 1845, after news of copper finds in the Keweenaw, he and others formed a company to look for minerals in the Upper Peninsula.
The search
Everett led a small party north. They heard about iron near Teal Lake, where William Austin Burt’s survey crew had seen compass needles swing the year before. The Ojibwe guide Marji Gesick took them to an outcrop of ore.
They staked claims and formed the Jackson Mining Company.
Early struggles
The company built a forge near the Carp River to make iron on site. It lost money. Shipping was hard and expensive, and the forge could not compete.
Iron mining on the range really took off after the Soo Locks opened in 1855 and railroads connected the mines to the docks at Marquette. Then ore could move by ship to furnaces on the lower lakes.
Legacy
The Jackson Mine operated for decades and is remembered as the first iron mine on the Lake Superior ranges. Everett settled in Marquette, where he was active in civic life. The site is marked in Negaunee.
