A Million Bats Live in This Abandoned Mine Shaft

Iron Mountain — I wouldn’t say I am the biggest fan of bats. Baseball bats, sure. Flying bats with micro fangs and red eyes, not so much. But the truth is, my logical mind knows that bats are needed. All things exist for a reason, after all, and those flying rodents serve a noble purpose. They eat bugs, and most importantly, they eat mosquitoes. No bat has ever sucked my blood in the middle of night leaving my legs scratchy and red the next morning.

So I suppose bats are alright, and with that understanding, I ventured out to Iron Mountain in hopes of seeing a few bats in an abandoned mine on top of Millie Hill.

Iron Mountain, like much of the Western U.P., was a mining region for quite a while in the 19th century. What they mined should be pretty clear given the names out here. Iron Mountain, Ironwood, Iron River, Iron County. They mined iron, obviously. But nothing lasts forever. Around the turn of the 20th century, the iron dried up at Millie Mine and the operation shut down.

And that’s how it sat until the 1970s when Steve Smith, a teenager at the time, lowered himself down into the abandoned Millie Mine and discovered thousands of bats living down there. I can’t imagine actually going down in an abandoned mine with thousands of bats and not being exceedingly creeped out, but it takes all kinds to make the world go ‘round. And in 1993, Smith’s soft spot for the bats he discovered had a real impact.

That year, the city of Iron Mountain wanted to fill the abandoned mine and be rid of the gaping hole in the ground. Of course, the bats would be buried for good in such an operation, and the prospect of the bat colony dying an unnecessary death wasn’t particularly pleasing to Steve Smith.

He contacted Bat Conservation International, lobbying them to help save the bats and their home. Eventually that’s what happened, and the city erected a cage around the mine and then put a fence around that so that the bats could come and go as they please while the people viewing them could remain at a safe distance.

The people who know about these things estimate that between 250,000 and 1,000,000 bats hibernate in the bat sanctuary in what was once Millie Mine. At the time of its conversion and protection, it was the second largest hibernaculum in the U.S. Since then, more than 1,000 other abandoned mines have been converted into bat sanctuaries like the one in Iron Mountain.

The idea of 1,000,000 bats beneath the earth strikes me as oddly terrifying. I can’t stop imagining them down there in their cold cavern. But they have to live somewhere, and with my newfound appreciation for bats, I am happy they have the old Millie Mine.

Conservation of our natural environment and wildlife is important. It’s a certain kind of American ethos going back to Teddy Roosevelt and John Muir. National parks, wildlife refuges, and nature reserves are treasured habitats enjoyed by both man and animal alike.

I live Up North, take advantage of these things all the time, walk with my kids in them just about every day, and even I take them for granted. It’s easy to forget that if no one protected any of this it might all be turned into a 7-Eleven parking lot.

I’ll take creepy bats under the ground over the “Big Gulp” any day of the week.

It’s good, very good, that the old mine wasn’t filled in. It’s important that Steve Smith helped save the bats and their sanctuary under the ground in Iron Mountain.

Even if we never see the netherworld beneath our feet—and I sadly wasn’t able to catch a glimpse of any bats as the middle of summer isn’t the ideal time for bat viewing at the mine—I’m glad the bat sanctuary is there, and I’m glad they are safe.

In addition to the theme of conservation, there is another positive theme here at the old Millie Mine. You might call it cultivation or creative thinking, but past the bat sanctuary and farther on into the woods there are trails for hiking and biking, beautiful vistas, and quiet forest scenes. If you keep walking, you end at a platform which opens to an incredible view high above Iron Mountain and the Menominee range.

There are markers and plaques along the way that teach a little bit about the various kinds of bats that live in the sanctuary—the Little Brown Bat, Big Brown Bat, Northern Long-Eared Bat, and Tri-Colored Bat—and the history of Iron Mountain and the mine that was once in use.

When we were there, a few people were walking on the trails and a couple others were getting their bikes out and ready for the bumpy tracks through the woods.

The city of Iron Mountain could have made the choice to let the old Millie Mine just kind of rot away indefinitely. It wouldn’t have been hard to do. That kind of thing has happened a lot around the U.P. in the old mining towns, some of which are now bonafide ghost towns.

Taking the initiative to save the bats and turn Millie Hill into a great place to get outdoors, walk in the woods, and look over the town and the land was a choice and a very good one at that. Industries are always changing and the world is always evolving. All we can do is change with it.

The mine is dead at Millie Hill, and that’s OK. There are other things going on there now. The bats are happy, the mountain bikers are on the trails, and the woods are pleasing.