Joel Dinda's photos with the keyword: republic

Republic, Michigan.

This very pretty little Methodist church is a few yards from Republic Mine. This photo was taken late on a cold Saturday evening in June of 1992. The ladies in the photo were preparing the church for a celebration (my memory again fails to retain the details) the next morning. Had a nice chat with the ladies, who invited me to attend the celebration/service. They were a little embarrassed because of the cardboard covering the flowers, but you've really got to protect the garden when the thermometer's about to drop through the floor.

Republic Mine, from the overlook platform in Republic, Michigan , 'round about 1990. Andy Larsen's website has a very similar photo dated July, 1992. (I have dozens of versions of this photograph, taken mostly in the late 80s and early 90s. I suspect that Andy has hundreds.) Republic Mine was originally opened in 1872 as an underground operation, and continued to operate as a shaft mine until 1926. Cleveland Cliffs '* open pit operation began in the late 1950s; they stopped the mining in 1982. For a decade and a half the pit looked more or less like this--as though they'd blown the supper whistle one evening and never came back. At the time this photo was taken, Cliffs* was claiming that the Republic still contained enough ore for another fifty years' mining effort, which they were holding in reserve until another day. I presume that to still be true. As Terraserver's 1998 aeriel photo of the mine shows , the pit was only a few yards from the Michigamme River. In the late 1990s, CCI* stopped whatever was keeping the flood away from the pit and the mine began to fill. Andy has a wonderful sequence of photos showing this occurring. Andy's Republic Mine pages are wonderful. I particularly like this set of photographs . *CCI, Cleveland Cliffs, Cliffs--all the same....