ONE OF THE SIGNS placed in Iron Mountain after Nancy Renkas disappeared in July 2016. This one is almost directly across Stephenson Avenue from the Midtown Mall parking lot where Renkas, of Florence, Wis., had been seen that day. The 47-year-old now has been missing for eight years. (Betsy Bloom/Daily News file photo)

IRON MOUNTAIN — Authorities have confirmed a search done Saturday on an Upper Pine Creek Road property was in connection with the July 2016 disappearance of a Florence, Wis., woman.

The Dickinson County Sheriff’s Office and multiple other investigative agencies executed a warrant Saturday to search a more than 200-acre area at Upper Pine Creek Road and Grandview Drive in Breitung Township, which investigators believe was the last known location where Nancy Renkas was seen alive, according to a joint news release Monday from the Dickinson County Prosecutor’s Office and the sheriff’s office.

Renkas, 47, went missing July 18, 2016, after being recorded by surveillance camera in the Midtown Mall parking lot in Iron Mountain. She is now presumed dead; the sheriff’s office declared the case a homicide investigation in 2022 on the sixth anniversary of her disappearance.

Saturday’s search drew much online speculation and attention after a roadblock was set up and traffic stopped between Williams and Woodland drives.

It prompted Dickinson County Sheriff Aaron Rochon to issue a statement the public was not in danger and the roadblock would be lifted later that day, but he did not comment as to the nature of the investigation.

Rochon also said no arrests had been made as of Saturday.

Monday’s statement said no other information was being disclosed at this time and the case remains an active investigation.

Anyone with knowledge about what might have happened to Renkas should contact Detective Lt. Brian Polzien at 906-774-6262, according to the news release.

In a 2021 interview with The Daily News, Renkas’ children, Kaylyn and Joseph Renkas, said their mother on July 18, 2016, had gone from their home in Florence to Iron Mountain to buy supplies for a meal to celebrate the sale of the family’s campground in Pembine, Wis., but never returned.

In 2018, then-Dickinson County Undersheriff Scott Metras and Detective Lt. Derek Dixon said a surveillance camera showed Renkas about 12:30 p.m. July 18, 2016, getting into a white SUV in the Midtown Mall parking lot that then headed east on U.S. 2. She left perishable groceries in her vehicle, indicating she believed it would be a brief trip, Metras said at the time.

The SUV driver was classified as a “person of interest” early in the investigation and was interviewed by both Florence and Dickinson County law enforcement, Metras said in 2018.

In an interview with The Daily News in July 2021, Louise Wender acknowledged the vehicle was her 2010 Lincoln Navigator. Renkas — the common-law wife of Wender’s brother, Mark Barker, who died in October 2015 at age 54 — had recommended they both check out a camper she’d seen in the Norway area, Wender said. Renkas’ children confirmed the family had discussed purchasing a camper in 2016.

But Wender, with her attorney present, said in that 2021 interview she returned Nancy Renkas to the Midtown Mall parking lot after never locating the camper.

Wender spoke up after Dixon testified during an online court hearing in August 2020 that she was a suspect in the case, when Wender unsuccessfully sought a protective order against another woman she claimed was harassing her on social media about the disappearance.

The Daily News did not publish her name at the time because Wender had not been charged in the investigation. But Wender and her attorney said in 2021 her name had been so widely circulated as the suspect that they wanted to tell her side of the story.

Wender lives on Upper Pine Creek Road.

Nancy Renkas’ children, who in 2021 were living in Missouri, could not be reached for comment.