[2] Native Americans first began mining copper at the Minong Mine site 4500 years ago, using stone implements to extract the pure copper available at the site[5] and cold-hammering the metal to form spear points and other implements.

[7] There was evidence that these ancient miners utilized fire-setting, where rocks were split by heating them with fire and rapidly cooling them with water to extract the copper within.

[7] When re-discovered in the 19th century, the prehistoric excavations in the Minong Mine area were described as extending "in almost a continuous line for more than two miles, in most instances the pits being so close together as barely to permit their convenient working.

[7] In 1871, a group of explorers working for the North American Mineral Land Company arrived on the island.

[7] In the fall of that year, the explorers found the old Native American pit mines west of McCargoe Cove.

[12] This copper mass showed evidence of being worked by prehistoric miners, "the surface of the mass had evidently been beaten up into projecting ridges... depressions, several inches deep, and the intervening elevations, with their fractured summits, covering every foot of the exposed superficies.

[5] Piles of tailings, the wreckage of a smithy, railroad tracks, and ore carts also are at the site.