Colonial Copper Mines

HE prospect of discovering gold and silver brought a gleam to the eyes of the earliest promoters of expeditions to the New World. While precious metals were of primary concern, copper (along with other seemingly less valuable metals) also occupied their minds. A very definite, though unfulfilled, desire to exploit copper was evident throughout the colonial period. Although iron proved important and primitive smelting works were established early, copper mining and smelting remained economically insignificant before i845, when the Michigan deposits began to produce. The colonists had no inkling of the immense outpouring of copper that would come from Michigan, Arizona, Montana, Utah, and other western states two hundred and fifty years after the first settlements, nor did they even anticipate the discovery of the major Appalachian Mountain copper deposits that came in the nineteenth century when money, techniques, and skilled labor greatly facilitated the task of exploitation. Nevertheless, they hoped from the first to find and utilize copper in the western hemisphere. The presence of a continental metallurgist, Joachim Ganz, among the members of the first Roanoke expedition in I585-I586 under Sir Ralph Lane indicates that they were as well prepared to exploit copper as any other mineral or metal. It also foreshadowed the significant role foreign labor would play: Ganz was born in Prague and probably received his training on the continent before he moved to England to assist at the Keswick works of the Mines Royal Company. The records fail to show that any copper ores were found, but if they had been the adventurers were ready.1 England, too, had hopes, in the days before the Cornish copper deposits were much developed, that the colonies would help supply her needs.2

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