Wednesday, July 26, 2023

Two in One Museum – annual camping in the UP, Blog Post #2

Over the years, we’ve stopped at this place in Iron Mountain, walked around the grounds, and debated taking a tour. We always had Dino, the Wonder Dog, with us, and though we’d left him in the truck at other places, there was no shade to park in and a cloudless sky above. This year, as sad as it was not having our recently departed companion with us, we paid for our tickets and went on in.

The Cornish Pumping Engine and Mining Museum and The World War II Glider and Military Museum are in two buildings next to each other and display a large number of artifacts and a lot of history.

The Cornish Pumping Engine is the largest standing steam-driven pumping engine ever built in the United States and one of the largest pumping engines in the world.

It removed the water from Iron Mountain's Chapin Mine, which was one of the wettest mines ever worked, and the largest producer of iron ore on the Menominee Iron Range.

The next room holds the Mining Museum.

A collection of mining artifacts, which were interesting, but I didn’t feel I had to learn anything about them.

In the next building was the World War II Glider, which was beyond amazing when you think about it.

A regular plane would fly with the glider in tow, then release it when getting close to their destination, which was often behind enemy lines. The glider pilot would land the glider where he could, delivering troop, weapons and other supplies to their allies.

Lightweight and engineless, the gliders could fly into enemy controlled areas without detection. Most of the gliders were made of plywood covered with fabric, weighing less than 4,000 pounds but able to carry up to twice that much in cargo. They were built for one-way missions and actually many of them were destroyed during landing as the glider pilots only had so much control without an engine.