Let’s describe the former history from 1960 when HIRAFU skiing area started a business.
In the Edo era, sulfur is mined by IWAO NUPURI in the northwest neighbor of NISEKO AN’NUPURI with GRAND HIRAFU, and it is left for record to have been carried out into Iwanai..
When it was the Meiji era, there was official guarantee of foreign employee Lyman (geologist) of Hokkaido Bureau of Development, and full-scale dig started. The Mitsui interest was Japan in 1886 and extended production by the first steam refinement method. Sulfur was raw materials which were indispensable to production of match which was then Japanese important export.
At first prehistory of NISEKO HIRAFU begins in Iwanai side in this way