5 What’s in a Name?

Cornell Theatre, Cornell Pharmacy, Cornell Hardware Company, Cornell CarQuest & Cornell BP Express.

These are a few of the businesses in the city of Cornell, Wisconsin. No people named Cornell in the wafer-thin White Pages however.

A quick Google search turns up a few more Cornells. There is Cornell, Michigan, Cornell, Illinois, and, of course, Cornell College.

Let’s start with the College.

Cornell College is a private liberal arts college in Mount Vernon, Iowa. Originally called the Iowa Conference Seminary, the school was founded in 1853 (12 years before The University) by Rev. Samuel M. Fellows. Four years later, in 1857, the name was changed to Cornell College, in honor of iron tycoon William Wesley Cornell, a distant relative of Ezra. For fun check out the College’s webpage: “We’re Not in Ithaca.”

Our University doesn't have a page: "We're Not in Mount Vernon," which people would more likely confuse with Virginia than Iowa.

Cornell College was recently ranked by Forbes as one of the top 25 Liberal Arts Colleges in the US. Cornell College also has the top 16th theater program in the country as well. A director of physical education was Glenn Cunningham, 1936 Olympian and one of my childhood heroes after I read a short biography that described how a gasoline explosion in his youth rendered his legs useless (doctors recommended amputation) but Glenn rehabilitated his body and set a world record in the mile.

Cornell, Illinois – no connection to Ezra – named for Rhode Island born Walter P Cornell in 1873.

And there is Cornell, Michigan, in the northern peninsula (near Escanaba).
You gotta enjoy this story.

Now I love my alma mater as much as the next alumnus (maybe a bit more), but George Mashek wins the loyalty award. Cornell, Michigan was first settled by Marcell Adhland and Edward Hollywood, both farmers, in 1886. The town was founded by George (Michigan town name book states initial "H" but it was probably "M") Mashek, an Escanaba lumberman (naturally), and Edward Arnold about 1887, and named for the University which Mashek (Class of 1891) had attended (for one year!); for Mr. Arnold, who didn’t get to name the town, the consolation prize was to become the town's first "Got another annual fund appeal from Cornell, George" postmaster.

By the way, it looks like George returned to Cornell: George Milik Mashek attended from 1887-89 and 1890-91. He is listed as Class of 1891, but in the 1891 register, he is shown as a sophomore. No confirmation that he received a degree though we know he studied, appropriately, mechanic arts. The Cornell Alumni News (Vol XXXIII No. 34, July 1931) shows George M. Mashek (1891) at 7x4 South Tenth Street, Escanaba, MI.

And there is the Cornell School District, Coraopolis, Pennsylvania. No idea why it is called Cornell. Maybe someone liked the alliteration: “Cornell in Coraopolis.”

4 Quick: What Does CU Stand For?

No secret to some in the Cornell administration (and quite a few folks in northern Wisconsin) – but a mystery to the rest of the Cornell community – when the University and Ezra sold the Wisconsin land and its trees (New York Times reported on May 21, 1902 that Jim Gates bought the last 56,000 acres), it retained the mineral rights to the property: probably not all 500,000 acres but possibly a sizable quantity. [According to a Cornell financial report of the mid-1930s, the administration of the Western Lands was closed in 1935, not 1902.]

What are mineral rights? “It is the right of the owner to exploit, mine, and/or produce any or all of the minerals lying below the surface of the property.”

So what? It’s been 100+ years. Any minerals of value under the surface of this Northern Wisconsin property would have been retrieved years ago, right?”

Ask the people of Ladysmith, Wisconsin and the Kennecott Minerals Company.

Decades after some excellent specimens were first collected (1915) by George Hotchkiss, the "rich" vein of copper, gold and silver was finally mined between 1993 and 1997.

The result: 35-acres of this surface mine yielded approximately 181,000 tons of marketable copper ($3,500/ton), 334,000 ounces of gold ($1,250/oz), and 3,300,000 ounces of silver ($18/oz). The mineral density of the ore was high enough to financially justify shipping the mined ore to other locations for processing.

Current market value of this find (though I acknowledge that these are current, historically high prices, not those from 13 years ago): $1,110,400,000 or $31,725,714 per acre.... if I calculated the prices correctly (help please) of Ag, Au, and (you guessed it) Cu.

And Ladysmith, WI is only 23 miles due north of Cornell, WI.

Ok – now I’m just being annoying – but if Cornell still holds the mineral rights to, say, 25% of the original 500,000 acres, and this land yields a mere one one-hundredth of the Flambeau Mine totals, these holdings would be worth $40 billion.

Game over.

Anyone want to take a few drill core samples in Chippewa, Rusk and Taylor and Dunn counties?

I’m heading back up to northern Wisconsin with a good shovel and the email address of a subsurface geologist from the UW or a researcher from the Wisconsin Geological and Natural History Survey.

By the way, the Flambeau mine site set a new (sorry) gold standard for environmental reclamation of the land.