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 Gogebic County
Gogebic derived its name from the Chippewa word "Agogebic," which is translated alternatively as either "a body of water hanging on high," or "where trout rising make rings on the water."
When Congress forced Michigan to give up its claim to Toledo in exchange for the western Upper Peninsula, the majority populace, concentrated in the Lower Peninsula, thought that the U.P. was good for little more than hunting, and was problematic due to the large number of American Indians living in the region.
Prior to that time, Gogebic County had been visited by several French missionaries and explorers, many of whom found their way into the region as early as the 1600s, but until the 1840s, the area's only visitors were missionaries, fur trappers, and Indians.
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When the first white settlers reached the area in the late 1800s, they found plenty of game, as well as Indians, but they also found a rich vein of iron ore that made Michigan a leader in iron ore production during the last three decades of the nineteenth century.
Before that, in 1840, the Chippewa Copper Mining Company was established, but its search for copper was unsuccessful. In 1850, explorers passing through the area remarked on its desolation.
But this isolated wilderness was significantly changed when Professor Raphael Pumpelly, a Harvard University geologist, concluded that iron ore might exist in large quantities in the region. Although expeditions were delayed for a variety of reasons, the first iron ore, a thousand tons from the Colby Hill Mine in Bessemer, was shipped from Gogebic Range in 1884. The last iron region opened up in the Upper Peninsula, the Gogebic Range quickly became one of Michigan's boom areas. There were 184 mining companies operating in Gogebic County by 1887.
Gogebic County was officially organized in 1887, with Bessemer chosen as the county seat.
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