Beautiful check from the Iron Cliffs Company issued in 1875. This historic document was printed by Henry Siebert & Bros. Company and has an ornate border around it. This item is over 133 years old and was signed by T. J. Houston. The Iron Cliffs Company was formed in 1865 by the financier Samuel J. Tilden and other influential New Yorkers. Tilden became the governor of New York and eventually an unsuccessful candidate for the 1876 Presidential election. Tilden acquired the popular vote but failed to attain the one electoral vote needed to win over Rutherford B Hayes of Ohio. The Cliffs Company was the first mine in the region to use dynamite in its operation when it opened in the summer of 1867. This mine was located in the southern half of the northeast corner of Section 9 of Township 47 Range 47, a near distance from the workings of the Lake Superior Company?s pits to the south. The Iron Cliffs Company named its mine the Barnum mine after the new mine president William H. Barnum. The Chicago and North Western Railway laid a branch of their track to the property in June of 1868, with the first shipment of the mine?s yearly value of 14,380 tons of ore shipped out of the Marquette harbor soon afterwards (Swineford76? p202). By 1871 the Iron Cliffs Company also owned the Tilden, Ogden, and Foster Mines. Work on the owned Excelsior, Salisbury, Rowland, and Pioneer (by lease from the Jackson Company) was added by 1876. The Iron Cliffs Furnace, located in the Tilden Township near Foster Lake was completed in the early part of 1874. The Furnace only ran part time in its early career.