Keweenaw National Historical Park
Keweenaw National Historical Park is a unit of the U.S. National Park Service. Established in 1992, the park celebrates the life and history of the Keweenaw Peninsula in the Upper Peninsula of the U.S. state of Michigan. It is a federal-local cooperative park made up of two primary units, the Calumet Unit and the Quincy Unit, and almost two dozen cooperating "Heritage Sites" located on federal, state, and privately owned land in and around the Keweenaw Peninsula. The National Park Service owns approximately in the Calumet and Quincy Units. Units are located in Baraga, Houghton, Keweenaw, and Ontonagon counties.
The Congressional legislation establishing the Park stated, among other things, that:
The oldest and largest lava flow known on Earth is located on the Keweenaw Peninsula of Michigan. This volcanic activity produced the only place on Earth where large scale economically recoverable 97 percent pure native copper is found.
The Keweenaw Peninsula is the only site in the country where prehistoric aboriginal mining of copper occurred. Artifacts made from this copper by these ancient Indians were traded as far south as present day Alabama.
Copper heritage
The Keweenaw Peninsula is the site of the most extensive known deposits of native copper in the world. Occurring here in relatively pure form, the red metal could be broken out of the rock and worked to make a wide variety of products, from jewelry and tools by its earliest miners to coins and electric wire by its final generations. Keweenaw copper was mined for approximately 7,000 years, from 5000 BCE until 1968. During the period for which records were kept, 1840–1968, more than 11 billion pounds of copper were mined here. During the peak production years of World War I, 1916–1917, the annual copper yield reached a maximum of 270 million pounds.
" The entire picture of copper mining on Michigan's Keweenaw Peninsula is best represented by three components: the Village of Calumet, the former Calumet and Hecla Mining Company properties, and the former Quincy Mining Company properties. The Village of Calumet best represents the social, ethnic and commercial themes. Extant Calumet and Hecla buildings best depict corporate paternalism and power, and the themes of extraction and processing are best represented by extant structures of the Quincy Mining Company."
Ethnic heritage
Many ethnic groups contributed to the heritage of the Keweenaw National Historical Park. Throughout the later half of the 19th century and the first two decades of the 20th century, immigrants from across Europe migrated to the Keweenaw to work in the copper mines and mining communities. By 1910 the Copper Country had been settled by French Canadian, German, Chinese, Irish, Cornish, Croatian, Finnish, Italian, Greek and Syrian people.When news of the region's rich native copper was first widely published in the 1830s, many families from the English county of Cornwall immigrated to the Upper Peninsula, bringing the Cornish pasty and their region's knowledge of hard-rock mining with them. Several park Heritage Sites, including the log cabin village of "Old Victoria," recall Cornish heritage in the region.
Later in the 1800s, many families from Finland emigrated to the United States. Until 1918, Finland belonged to Russia as a Grand Duchy. A large percentage of these Finns settled in the Western Upper Peninsula because of perceived similarities between their old and new homes, and found work in the Keweenaw. Finnish saunas can still be found throughout the area. Several park Heritage Sites, including the "Hanka Homestead", recall the Finnish influx.
Calumet Unit
The Calumet Unit of the Keweenaw National Historical Park includes many sites in and around the villages of Calumet and Laurium, which are not ghost towns but operating human communities that have survived the shutdown of their parent employer, the Calumet and Hecla Mining Company, in 1968. By digging shafts into the rock, the men and owners of the Calumet & Hecla found geological formations of rock laced with nuggets of almost pure copper.The Calumet & Hecla was the richest of the separate copper mines of the Keweenaw, and the towns built at the mine head reflect its productivity. A 1,200-seat opera house, large churches built of Lake Superior brownstone, and mansions built by the mining bosses survive as memories of the Calumet mine's glory years.
Quincy Unit
The Quincy Unit of the Keweenaw National Historical Park commemorates one of the most remarkable feats of engineering in northern Michigan, the deep Quincy Mine shaft. Nicknamed "Old Reliable" for its record of paying annual dividends for decades, the Quincy mine enjoyed a position on the rich copper rock of the Pewabic Lode. A private preservation foundation maintains the Quincy Mine's surface mine hoist, which is the largest steam-powered hoist in the world.Heritage Sites
As of 2023, the Keweenaw National Historical Park operates in cooperation with 23 heritage sites in the Keweenaw Peninsula and nearby. The heritage site system was established in 2007 with an original set of 19 sites. In October 2013, two new sites were added: Houghton's Carnegie Museum and the Michigan Technological University Archives.Adventure Mining Company
The Adventure Mining Company is located at 200 Adventure Avenue in Greenland, Michigan. The Adventure Mine operated in Greenland from 1850 until 1920, and consisted of five shafts, one of which descended beneath the surface. Although the site seemed promising, the mine never turned a profit. The Adventure Mining Company currently offers tours of the surface and underground portions of the Adventure Mine.A.E. Seaman Mineral Museum
The A.E. Seaman Mineral Museum was located on the Fifth Floor of Electrical Resource Center at Michigan Technological University in Houghton, Michigan. As of 2011, it is now located across from the Advanced Technology Development Complex. The museum is named for Arthur Edmund Seaman, who worked at Michigan Tech in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and was the museum's curator from 1928 to 1937.The mineral collection was established in the 19th century, and by 1890 numbered 27,000 specimens. A museum to house the collection was constructed in 1908. The museum has since moved several times, and the collection has grown to over 30,000 specimens, of which 8,000 are on display. The museum features an extensive mineral collection and exhibits on copper formation, and has the world's best collection of crystallized native copper and native copper in crystallized calcite.
Carnegie Museum
The Carnegie Museum in Houghton is a former Carnegie library and former home of the Portage Lake District Library. It is currently a museum focusing on local history.Calumet Theatre
The Calumet Theatre is located at 340 Sixth Street in Calumet, Michigan, within the park's Calumet Unit. The theatre was built in 1899 and opened on March 20, 1900. It is the first municipally built theatre in the country. The theatre originally housed live theatre, attracting notable performers such as Frank Morgan, Douglas Fairbanks, Sr., Lon Chaney, Sr., John Philip Sousa, Sarah Bernhardt, and Madame Helena Modjeska among others. However, in the late 1920s, the theatre converted to a movie house, serving in this medium until the 1950s. Summer stock theatre was brought back to the Calumet Theater in 1958, and performed there every summer until 1968, and returned in 1972.In 1975, the auditorium was restored for the centennial of Calumet. In 1988−89, the exterior of the theatre was restored. In 1983, the Calumet Theatre Company was incorporated as a non-profit organization. The staff consists mostly of volunteers, though there are eight full-time staff members. Today, the Calumet Theatre is home to as many as 80 theatre-related events a year, with an estimated 20,000 people attending.
Chassell Heritage Center
The Chassell Heritage Center is located at 42373 Hancock Street in Chassell, Michigan. The heritage center, located in a 1917 elementary school building, features exhibits that trace Chassell's history from a fishing and lumber town up to the present. It includes the Chassell Township Museum and the Friends of Fashion Vintage Clothing Collection.Copper Range Historical Museum
The Copper Range Historical Museum is located Trimountain Avenue in South Range, Michigan. The museum is located in an old bank building and features exhibits on the Copper Range Company.Coppertown USA Museum
The Coppertown USA Museum is located at 25815 Red Jacket Road in Calumet, Michigan, within the park's Calumet Unit. Coppertown USA is housed within the Calumet & Hecla Mining Company's old pattern shop. Exhibits span the range of the copper mining timeline, from prehistoric times to the present, but concentrate on the operations of the Calumet & Hecla Mining Company.Delaware Copper Mine
[FIle:Delaware Mine Entrance.JPG|left|thumb|150px|Delaware Mine entrance]The Delaware Copper Mine is located off U.S. Highway 41, south of Copper Harbor, Michigan. The Delaware Copper Mine provides tours of one of the oldest copper mines in the Keweenaw, dating back to 1846. The mine had five shafts, with the deepest reaching. The mine is open June through October and offers guided and self-guided tours.