DISCOVERY OF LAKE SUPERIOR IRON ORE

It was from this section corner on the morning of Sept. 19, 1844 that a U.S. Government survey party set forth to the south as the original survey of Upper Michigan. The party was under the charge of Deputy Surveyor William Austin Burt, inventor of the solar compass.

 

Running the line between Townships 26 and 27 West, the party encountered a highly magnetic area that rotated their compass to point south. Burt directed his men to search for the cause, and they found lumps of high grade iron ore, thus discovering what was to become the Marquette Iron Range, the first to be found in the Lake Superior Region. The Jackson Mining Co., organized in Jackson, Michigan on July 23. 1845. acquired Section 1 and became the region's first iron mining company. It, in turn, started the Carp River Forge, the first to make iron from Lake Superior ore.