Michigan's Upper Peninsula is home to three iron mining belts, the westernmost of which is the Gogebic Iron Range. While stories about discoveries of iron there date to the 1840s, the district did not truly begin to produce until the 1880s.

The Newport Mine owed its existence in part to a Harvard University professor, Raphael Pumpelly, who had been traveling in the region in 1871 when he left his camp and climbed the hill that later bore the Newport name. Here he claimed to have spotted distinctive yellow markings in the rocks while deep in thought, evidence that he and fellow investors used to purchase the property, located near what became Bessemer. The mine opened in 1886 and, by some accounts, was believed by its operators to be exhausted by the 1890s. A further geological study found a rich lode far deeper than the existing diggings, and the shaft at the Newport Mine was dug first to 1,400 feet and then to 3,200. By one report, this expansion allowed for some 35 million additional tons of ore to be mined.