The presence of iron ore in the Lake Superior country was hardly suspected until after 1840. All companies were formed to mine copper, silver, or gold. The state geologist made no mention of iron in his first report in 1840, but in September, 1844, a party of government surveyors running the lines of a township twelve miles west of Marquette, noticed the deflection of their compass needle. The party was under the leadership of Mr. Burt, the inventor of the solar compass, and he was overjoyed to find his instrument working according to his predictions. The deflection was so great that he summoned his party and sent them out in all directions to search for the iron which he was convinced must exist in large quantities in the near vicinity. Every one of them returned in a short time with specimens of the ore. Thus was discovered the first of the famous ranges that to-day produce one-third of all the iron mined in the United States. At the time of the discovery of iron deposits there were not over fifty people in Marquette County. Expeditions were fitted out in each succeeding year, and companies began to operate the mines. They worked against great natural obstacles in the remote wilderness. It is hard for us to realize how far out of the world this country seemed at that time. When Michigan was admitted as a state in 1837, the reception of the upper peninsula in compensation for a cession to Ohio of the well-known Toledo tract was regarded with the greatest dissatisfaction. The “State Gazetteer” of that year spoke of the new possession as a wild tract of twenty thousand miles of howling wilderness, while one of the political songs of the time told with scorn how the people were being coerced into trading away the southern land for “that poor frozen land of Michigan.” Within twenty years that sentiment underwent a swift and radical change. The first companies struggled along in the wilderness carrying their ore to a forge on the Carp River, bringing it first by Indian trail and then by wagon road twelve miles down to the waterside, where it was loaded on sailing vessels by being put on wheelbarrows and rolled up a steep plank. In 1852 the Marquette Iron Company shipped six barrels by this laborious method to Cleveland, which was the first ever received from Lake Superior. The first considerable shipment was one of five thousand tons three years later. Then the great panic of 1857 stopped people for the time being from venturing their money in new and unproved enterprises; but the Civil War created a great demand for iron, and from that time the industry has flourished.