Copper Harbor is a small community and is the last town when heading north east up the Keweenaw Peninsula, the town has a population of just over 125 residents and during the summer months likely has more tourists than residents.
The town of Copper harbor does not have chain stores or chain hotels as you would see in a city. The town includes a few small family run motels and restaurants and is one of the more remote towns in Northern Michigan. The area isn’t well covered by cellular providers and many of the residents view it as a plus and is located far away from the modern “hustle and bustle”. Due to its northly location and being away from much of the light pollution this area is a common place visitors to go and view the Aura Borealis or northern lights.
Fort Wilkins State Historic park is located just past Copper Harbor on US-41 and is one of the few remaining locations you will see before US-41 ends. The remote fort was established in 1844 to provide protection for copper prospectors in the area from the Native Americans. The fort itself did not see any real action but at the time was extremely remote.
The remoteness of this location was attractive for my activation as due to the extremely low noise floor. Much of the location is shielded by the higher surrounding terrain and given its remoteness and low population man made noise or QRM is nearly non-existent. When traveling to this area many of the local establishments do have public WIFI, including the park itself, just don’t plan on having a solid cellular connection for self spotting.
The park has a few different areas with room for performing activations. I envision most hams that activate this park use the area near the playscape adjacent to the entrance to the fort. For this activation I scoped out a different location within the park using www.hammap.io. I had learned about this website from some posts on the Amateur Radio subreddit (www.reddit.com/r/amatureradio/). Hammap.io is helpful as it shows the locations of both POTA and SOTA activation sites in addition to showing the boundaries of the park. One critique I have always had with using the official Parks on the air website (www.pota.app) is that the site does not show the actual park boundaries. Using Hammap.io I was able to discover that the park boundary included a small secluded section on Lake Manganese that was accessible by taking Manganese Road just off of US-41. We found the road to be well maintained and well accessible paved road.
We found this a nice and quiet location for the activation, the site included 3 picnic tables near a small boat launch. The lake itself was a beautiful 52.5 acres and from this location there are no structures in sight except for the forest itself. I should provide a minor but noteworthy warning to future potential visitors, there are some reported black bears in the area so be sure to take the proper precautions. During our visit we did not encounter any signs of bears.
We setup the equipment on one of the picnic tables on the far end and deployed the antenna on the narrow beach. Just after we finished setting up we were greeted by a group of picnickers who scoped out the location for a late lunch picnic. With the picnickers nearby I didn’t want to bother them continually calling CQ POTA so I decided it would be best to start off hunting.
Looking at the band scope of my IC-7300 it was amazing as the noise floor was nearly non-existent. Hunting was a bit of a slow process but I was able to make around 10 contacts. Once the picnickers had finished up I decided it was time to start calling CQ and made another 11 contacts. After around and hour we decided it was time to start packing things up.
While writing this post and after submitting my activation log I realized that Fort Wilkins Historic Park is also considered a Keweenaw Heritage Site and also falls under US-0740. The next time we activate the park we will be sure to activate this park with both park numbers.
’73 and POTA on!
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