Winona: A Copper Mining Ghost Town | Documentary | Full Movie

It's wonderful to hear this lovely woman sing her childhood school play song about the daffodils. I lived up in Houghton Hancock. I was the first female bartender at the Douglas House Saloon & Hotel built during the copper mining booming era by Douglas Houghton I've enjoyed the many stories these residents and descendants of Winona are sharing. My father's people were all West Virginia coal miners. All of my uncles had black lung disease by the time they were in their early 40s. Each one of them has succumb to the suffocating blackness of black lung disease.

I grew up in this area. Played, probably foolishly as a very young boy around the abandoned mines. Fished many small cricks for brook trout. Family names were Maki and Naasko. Explored many a two track road to nowhere to explore for small crick crossings and brook trout. Visited relatives in Toivola regularly. Hunted agates along the Lake Superior shoreline at Agate Beach, 14 Mile Point and many other locations. My Grandpa Peter Maki worked in the copper mines for many years as a trammer until he was seriously injured in a mining collapse. Fished the Little Elm River a lot. Very fond memories, particularly of the wonderful nature that is the Keweenaw and the wonderful people who were neighbors. Very fond memories! Thank you for sharing this story.

I first visited Winona about 3 years ago. Every Autumn I like to take a drive up the Keweenaw and poke around historical sites while picking some apples off the roadside trees. As I do every year, seemingly always on my way to somewhere else, I again saw the Winona sign on M26. This time I turned off the highway and onto Winona road. It is hard to believe there was such a bustling mining town when you look at it today. A few houses still occupied, a few crumbling structures, and a few dirt roads that appear to lead into the woods, to nowhere in particular. Being a big history buff I researched Winona's history and learned how extensive the mining was in this particular area, albeit for only a short time. The mining company's promise of a bright future for Winona that never came to be. The school still looks wonderful and is practically the only sign of activity in this sleepy, quiet ghost of Michigan's past.

Wow, this is pretty awesome!😊

I lived in painesdale and I rock hunt for copper great story I just watched but sad to for people living there.

The opening sounds like a poem my grandfather once told me. Was it an original thought or was it truly part of a poem?

My dads family homesteaded just north in toivola.

Copper shows up as Turquoise!! Its a blue colored rock! Common in the SW usa.

Graduated from high school, Jeffries.!!!! Painesdale last time I was there they moved the whole road and they put in a prison?????