By GRAHAM JAEHNIG

For The Daily News

ROCKLAND TOWNSHIP — Jason Pragacz, of Anti-engineeringsolutions of Ontonagon, is installing a new cedar shake roof on one of the former miners cabins at Old Victoria Historical Site, which is now the Visitor Center.

Old Victoria is about three miles from Rockland, and 16 miles south of Ontonagon Village.

Cedar shakes are complex to work with and so are time-consuming.

The big thing, Pragacz said, is that every shingle has to be staggered, so each one has to be selected individually.

“They go from three-inch up to eight-inch,” he explained. “And none of your seams can overlap each other.”

The shingles are 22 inches long. Once installed, seven inches of a shingle will be exposed, leaving approximately 15 inches of its length laid beneath the next overlaying piece.

“When they’re all laid together, you wind up with almost four layers of cedar shakes,” he said.

Pragacz said the roof is expected to last about 40 years, adding the shingles only look new for the first year: “Then they gray out quick.”

Pragacz did not give a definite completion date for the project.

“It all depends on how the heat treats me,” he said. “That’s the big thing. It’s slow going.”

A major factor is the location of the historical site, which is situated on a sunny hillside. Surrounding forest largely protects the location from wind.

The Victoria Mine site is renowned for its history. It was the site of the first mining conducted by Europeans, when British fur trader, Alexander Henry, attempted to open a mine on the bank of the Ontonagon River in 1771. It was near this site, in 1843, that engineering genius Julius Eldred removed the famed Ontonagon Boulder, which is on display at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington D.C.

One of the very earliest ventures organized in Ontonagon County after the Copper Treaty of La Pointe, in 1843, the Victoria was originally formed as the Cushin Mine in 1849, but operated less than a year before it became the Forest Mining Company, operating from 1850 to 1858. Between then and 1899, the mine was operated, off and on, as the Victoria Mining Company.

In January 1899, the company was reorganized as the Victorian Copper Mining Company, which included the Glenn, Shirley, Oneida, Arctic and Sylvan mines. It was at this time that several buildings were constructed for the workers, and their families, along with several structures at the mine. A two-room school was built, and also a communal sauna. The company store included a post office, a butcher shop and supply storage. The supply house was used for dances, movies and other entertainment.

The mine was never able to profit, however. According to local historian and author James Jamison, the Victoria suspended operations after World War I.

The Victoria Copper Mining Records collection at the Michigan Technological University Archives and Copper Country Collections states that in August 1929, the Victoria Copper Mining Company sold its water rights to the Northern Acquisition Company and in December sold the remainder of its property to the Copper Range Company. The records do not indicate the date of the final dissolution of the Victoria Copper Mining Company, but the liquidation of its physical assets in 1929 brought its activities to an end.

After the abandonment of the town site, the Victoria houses were rented out, sold, torn down or fell victim to vandals and nature. The Society for the Restoration of Old Victoria was formed in 1974 to restore Victoria buildings.

Pragacz said most of the houses’ materials were taken from the ruins of another housing site farther up the hill. When restoration began, some of the homes were reassembled on existing foundations while others stand on posts. Four of seven original homes have been restored.