Copper was also discovered at Bruce Mines, 100 kilometres east of Sault Ste. The copper zone was not extensive, however, and there were many problems in mining and processing it which could not be overcome and the venture was quickly abandoned.

Experienced miners were imported from England and a small shaft was sunk. Marie by the Ojibway Indians who are one of the present day groups descended from the Northern Shield culture. In 1870, Alexander Henry, a fur trader, was shown outcroppings with copper occurrences north of Sault Ste. Long before western civilization arrived on the North American continent, trade routes were operating throughout Northern Ontario with items of copper, silver and other materials changing hands. These people discovered and used native copper to make not only tools and weapons, but jewellery and ornaments.

Cultures succeeding the mainly big game hunting Planos continued obtaining materials for tools and weapons by open pit mining until people known as the Northern Shield Culture became dominant throughout North-Eastern Ontario. They crafted this raw material into tools and weapon heads. After the last period of glaciations 11,000 years ago, people of the Plano culture moved into the area and later began quarrying quartzite at Sheguiandah on Manitoulin Island.

Mining in the area actually began long before Thomas Flanagan –at least 10,000 years before. For it was in August of that year that Thomas Flanagan, a blacksmith on the Canadian Pacific Railway, noticed a rust coloured patch of rock while working with a crew in a recently blasted rock cut north-west of present-day Sudbury. Often, if not always, when the mining history of the Sudbury region is considered, 1883 is treated as the starting date.

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