Iron Mountain, Michigan: A.C. Hoyle Winch Guy, Steam Pump

An old mine winch with a few extra parts welded on make this look like a guy surrounded by other winches. This is located outside the Cornwell Steam Pump Museum. The museum has the largest steam powered pump in the US. It also has a lot of mining exibits and a museum for WWII gliders that were built locally.

It cost about $11-$12 to get in to both museums. If you go be sure and watch the video on the gliders. They also have some other old mining equipment outside and that is all free the hours are variable so call if you want to go into the museum.

It's orange, and it's big. No, it's not the Great Pumpkin; it's the Cornish Pumping Engine in Iron Mountain, MI. Score one for promoters who transformed an abandoned industrial eyesore into a tourist attraction. At least, they built a shed over it. So called because it was patterned after water pumps used at British coal mines, this behemoth used to lift 200 tons of water per minute out of the Chapin Iron Mine from 1893 until it was retired in 1914. The mine closed in the early 1930s. The pit for the flywheel is 20 feet deep. The top of the cylinder is 54 feet above the gallery. The whole contraption must weigh about 725 tons. It's painted orange as a tribute to the Allis-Chalmers farm-equipment manufacturing company from Milwaukee (now defunct), which was a successor of the firm that designed the pump.

Also under roof are tools -- large and small -- of the deep-rock mining trade of the early 20th century. The metal-sided exhibit hall is dark enough that you can imagine yourself crawling around 1,500 feet below ground.