Copper Falls State Park
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Copper Falls State Park is two miles outside of Mellen, where the Bad River and its branch, the Tyler Forks, fall through deep gorges cut into ancient lava flows. People of the Old Copper culture worked the pure copper of this region for centuries, and prospectors dug for copper ore in the canyon between Copper Falls and Brownstone Falls in the early 1860s and again around 1900, finding little. The park was created in 1929, and in the 1930s the Civilian Conservation Corps and the Works Progress Administration built its log buildings and much of the rest of it. I spent the afternoon of August 10, 2021, there, on a sunny summer day. It’s kind of a pretty park. I walked the trail along the Bad River past the falls, and I flew the drone over the gorge at Brownstone Falls, where the Tyler Forks pours into the Bad River, and over Loon Lake.
Photos from Copper Falls State Park
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A waterfall farther down the Bad River.
Boulders in the Bad River.
Loon Lake, from the drone.