Nestled on the eastern side of the Keweenaw Peninsula is a small community with big appeal. History and romance run rampant in this area, which saw the landings of copper prospectors far in advance of those visiting the more prosperously mined Calumet region. Today, the few residents of Lac La Belle say that peace and quiet are the big attractions.
  Prior to 1850, the Lac La Belle Mining Company had driven a tunnel 400 feet and followed a vein of ore forty feet. It was eighteen inches wide and bore sulphurets of copper. Later, a 1,000-foot adit was dug at the base of Mount Bohemia. At this time, the Lac La Belle stamp mill was built as the first steam mill in the district to process the rock and ore from Keweenaw's Oneida and Delaware mines. So slow was transit during this time that it took four months to move the machinery needed from Pittsburgh.
  In 1863, as the Civil War intensified, the North's need for copper pushed prices up and stimulated mining all along the Keweenaw Peninsula. Convinced that the vicinity around Mount Bohemia showed promise for yielding commercial amounts of copper, six New York capitalists formed the Mendota Mining Company, locating its Michigan headquarters at Lac La Belle.
  While the inland lake Lac La Belle was only three miles from Lake Superior, there was no canal connecting them. The mining company quickly organized plans for a canal that would create a harbor for importing supplies and exporting products from the mine.
   In 1866, after a series of financial and geographic hardships that put the project six months behind schedule, agent Samuel W. Hill reported to Governor Crapo that he found the canal to exceed, in almost all aspects, the requirements set forth by Congress. Only the piers extending into Bete Grise Bay needed further attention. Hill concluded that he had "No hesitation in pronouncing the Lac La Belle Canal an honor to the State [and], indeed, the finest work of the kind" he had ever seen. Based on Hill's glowing endorsement, the governor approved a grant for completion. In August 1867, the canal was completed. The cost of the project, including the canal, piers and a seawall, exceeded $100,000. The mining firm received some 100,000 acres of land in Schoolcraft County for completing the task.
  Several mills were built in Lac La Belle by organizations of the Delaware Mine, seven miles toward the Greenstone Ridge area of Keweenaw County. To these sites went tons of copper rock to be processed and dispatched to market by way of Lake Superior via Bete Grise.
  But by 1882, the economics of copper had taken a downturn, and expensive surface equipment ceased to be used. Work soon came to a standstill. In 1884, only nine pounds of copper was coming from a ton of rock and the price received was only seventeen cents per ton. The mine was closed in 1884 and there was no attempt to work the big plant until 1888, when a new firm, the Lac La Belle Mining Company, was formed. But even the appeal of a new glamorous title didn't bring new copper, and mining operations quickly ceased. In addition to milling, Lac La Belle also had a smelter, Keweenaw County's only formal attempt at smelting. The smelter was located close to the stamp mill, and was designed to have a reverberatory furnace, although that was never installed. Both the smelter and the stamp mill were erected before there was ever a shortline railway installed between Delaware and Lac La Belle. The smelter was constructed at a cost of $43,000, a vast sum for a site which had no actual prospects of obtaining any copper concentrates to smelt. Thus the project stood, with a good-sized building but no furnace.
  With the mining era long gone, the community now considers other means of economic support, mainly tourism and natural scenic beauty. With a stunning view of Lake Superior and the surrounding forests, Mount Bohemia has been the subject of many studies by potential developers and the present era is no exception. A ski hill has been considered for the site many times, but has been aborted in the past due to a lack of community support (Development work on a ski resort is currently taking place.) The mountain, which is 1,467 feet above sea level and has an 850-foot vertical drop, is significant for the Midwest.
  One attraction which has stood the test of time is the Mendota Lighthouse. State archivist LeRoy Barnett reports that after the canal was finished in 1867, Congress appropriated $14,000 for a wooden tower lighthouse and keeper's quarters on Mendota Point across from Bete Grise. However, when the work was completed in 1870, commercial activity in the area had already tapered off dramatically, and the federal government decided the lighthouse was obsolete, stating that the improvements were of little use to navigators as a coast light. In addition, a Congressional report indicated that the movement of sediments by shoreline currents had left the water depth insufficient for any freight navigating Lake Superior. The Mendota light was dismantled at the end of the 1870 shipping season and moved to the Marquette breakwater.
  Locals were in an uproar at the loss of their light. The Portage Lake Mining Gazette accused the government of deserting "one of the most important harbors of refuge on the whole chain of lakes," and conceded that while the water was only five-feet deep in some parts, those areas could be dredged easily at a very low cost, compared to the importance of the canal as a shipping venue. The Gazette's appeals, however, fell on deaf ears until 1895 when the government was grudgingly persuaded by commercial fishing interests to build the present lighthouse. This was not a coast light to help commercial vessels on Lake Superior, but one for locals to guide their boats to the channel in the dark bay. Local historian Donald Nelson records that William Jilbert and his family lived in the lighthouse until 1933 when the oil lamp was turned off and replaced with an acetylene lamp. In the late 1950s the Corps of Engineers deemed the lighthouse no longer useful and sold it to Gordon and Margaret Jaaskelainen, who maintained it for forty years as a summer home. In 1997, downstate businessman Gary Kohs purchased the Mendota Lighthouse.
  Although the light beacon is listed as an operational navigational aid, its main purpose is to guide pleasure boats into the channel and Lac La Belle. The canal re-mains inaccessible to all but the smallest vessels despite a $450,000 project in 1960 to remove the sediment that had accumulated over the last century. Since that time, the Lac La Belle Canal has been a tourist attraction for fishermen and recreational boaters.
—Jane Nordberg

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