Peshekee Road: A cautionary tale gives perspective

January 23, 2011 by Jon Saari http://www.miningjournal.net/page/content.detail/id/558055/Another-opinion.html?nav=5003

In 1890-1892 the Iron Range and Huron Bay Railroad built a mine hauling railroad along what is now called the Peshekee Grade/County Road 607. As recounted in an enterprising history by Robert D. Dobson, this venture was designed to link the Champion Mine with an ore dock on Huron Bay, a distance of about 40 miles.

Fifteen hundred workers laid the tracks and blasted cuts through the rocks, but the project failed miserably. Engineers had underestimated the steepness of the slopes descending to Lake Superior, and steam locomotives were unable to negotiate the climb or the descent. It became the Railroad to Nowhere.

The chief engineer fled to Mexico, the workers went unpaid, the ore dock was dismantled and the rolling stock sold. But the failed railroad eventually became the main route of a gravel road that facilitated modest development in the western part of the Michigamme Highlands: camper associations, second homes and logging.

Most of the land stayed wild and undeveloped. Parts of it became protected wilderness areas: Craig Lake State Park and the federal McCormick Tract. As late as the 1990s, it was possible to buy whole sections of land with undeveloped lakes on them – a rarity anywhere in the lower 48.

Kennecott’s Eagle Mine lies about 12 miles east of the Peshekee Grade. Some area residents imagine that a new, little settlement may grow up around it, like the mining locations of the past. The mine and a new proposed North-South road, so the storyline went, would open up the back country to development: a few stores, a bar, maybe a resort or motel.

But I think this is an illusion. This alternative mine haul road, officially cancelled by Kennecott this week, would likely have barely outlasted the mine, which has a projected life of 6-8 years and no guarantees beyond that.

A better image of that haul road’s likely future would be today’s Peshekee Grade: created by an inflated vision of usefulness, it has become a step-child of the Road Commission, abandoned to the bruising elements of wintertime ice and snow, freeze and melt. The Kennecott Highway would have become an expensive Road to Nowhere.

This region stayed undeveloped because the land is harsh and inhospitable to inattentive humans, including engineers, investors and recreators. Snowmobilers better be thickly clothed and fully fueled when they head out across it, and even then they are running risks.

I met a man in L’Anse who was once snowmobiling along the headwaters of the Peshekee when his machine broke through the surface; he had unknowingly been sledding on top of the tag alders, on six feet of compacted snow!

At a public hearing on the North-South Highway, a Township Supervisor once remarked that the extensive McCormick wilderness should be “enough playground” for us silent-sport environmentalists. He misses the point. It’s not primarily about recreation or scenic beauty, but prizing intact ecosystems, appreciating their contributions for healthy populations of native plants and animals, and not degrading them.

To protect its intact ecosystems, the U.P. cannot be a few islands of wildness. It needs bio-gems as core areas, but the linking corridors and buffer zones are really the key to long term sustainability. These are areas of mixed usage, of working forests and backwoods camp culture and recreational trails. Here we must be particularly careful when we add a road, a trail, a power line, a pit or a mine.

The small changes do add up, inexorably. Will the “next generation” of natural resource users, in particular non-ferrous mining and biomass energy projects, get it right? Don’t expect Rio Tinto or even the DNR/DEQ to speak up for the best and highest uses of the land. Be part of the watchdog movement over industry and government that offers a hope that this place we call home will remain special for a long time.

Editor’s note: Jon Saari is a retired Northern Michigan University professor and member of the Upper Peninsula Environmental Coalition.

From Teresa Bertossi:  http://www.miningjournal.net/page/content.detail/id/558089/Bad-planning-here.html?nav=5067

And from the Editor of the Mining Journal:      http://www.miningjournal.net/page/content.detail/id/558053/Kennecott-move-to-halt-road-work-is-regrettable.html?nav=5003

Headwaters News:  http://headwatersnews.net/feature/mining-road-plan-must-have-public-priorities-not-rio-tinto-profits-in-mind/