Unincorporated community in Michigan, United States
Gay is an unincorporated community in Keweenaw County in the U.S. state of Michigan.[1] It is 12 miles from Lake Linden on Copper Island at the western end of the Upper Peninsula. As an unincorporated community, Gay has no legally recognized boundaries or population statistics of its own. Local government is provided by Sherman Township.
History
The town was named after Joseph E. Gay, one of the founders of the Mohawk and Wolverine Mining Companies.[2] Gay had explored around the Keweenaw Peninsula, searching for areas where mining and milling could be viable. This proved successful in 1896 when Gay followed up on the discovery of copper by a lumberman named Ernest Koch, establishing the Mohawk Mine in nearby Mohawk to take advantage of the situation.[3]
In need of an improvement in their copper production, the Mohawk Mining Company built the Mohawk Mining Company Stamp Mill in Gay in 1898.[2] The mill processed copper from the Mohawk Mining Company and the Wolverine Mining Company.[3] The residual sand from the stamping process was dumped into Lake Superior, increasing the town's land area greatly. The mill closed in 1922, leaving only the large smokestack and ruins remaining.
At its peak, Gay had 1,500 residents across 117 homes.[3] These residents worked at the town's office, warehouse, blacksmith, dock, pump house, and the copper stamping mill. Children attended the town's 250 student schoolhouse. However, the town began to decline after the 1922 closure of the stamping mill. 11 years later in 1933, the Mohawk Mining Company left the area completely as it had gone belly up. The town struggled on, eventually losing its last industry, logging, in 1965 as railroads left the region.
