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14 Copper

for gold and silver, the first Europeans who colonized the region also found copper and other metals to exploit. It wasn’t until the early 1700s that copper mining in the North American colonies began in earnest. One of the earliest copper mines was in Connecticut, in what is now East Granby, located halfway between present-day Hartford and Springfield, Massachusetts. When the mine had finally given up all its copper, the colonists used the tunnels as Connecticut’s first prison. The site is now known as Old New-Gate Prison and Copper Mine, and it is a National Historic Landmark. The colonists also established an early copper mine in Lynn, Massachusetts, in 1664. Many of these mines ran dry as the demand for copper and brass, an alloy of copper, increased. Brass forms when copper mixes with zinc. By 1750, the colonial population in America had doubled to nearly a million people, and the demand for copper skyrocketed. As a result, the colonists were forced to import one-fifth of the metal they used from Great Britain.

The Pahaquarry Copper Mine in northern New Jersey was built in the 1740s but permanently closed and abandoned in the 1920s.