Today’s blog post was written by one of our outstanding archives student assistants, a 2022 Michigan Tech grad. Now beginning life in the real world, she shares in her experiences in the Michigan Tech Archives in her own words. I guess I’ll introduce myself first — hi, I’m Madison (Madi) Degnitz, and I worked as . . .
Julia Dally was a Cornishwoman by birth, blood, and upbringing. She knew, when she married a miner, that her husband might die under tragic circumstances. Surely she did not expect that tragedy to come at the point of a gun in his sleep, thousands of miles from their native land. Like many immigrants to the . . .
The Michigan Tech Archives recently installed its traveling exhibit, Becoming the Pride of the Upper Peninsula: The Formative Years of the Copper Range Railroad, at the Ontonagon County Historical Society in Ontonagon. The six exhibit panels will be on view at the OCHS on an open-ended loan this summer. The exhibit may be viewed onsite . . .
Memorial Day weekend marks the unofficial start of summer, and that means that the reading room at the Michigan Tech Archives is about to get busier. As one might imagine, the average driver finds traveling to the Copper Country in July more appealing than in January. Elsewhere in the country, too, genealogists, students, faculty, authors, . . .
Planes, trains, and automobiles: there was a time when a person bound for the Copper Country could choose any of the three ways to travel. Although many decades have passed since train whistles echoed through Keweenaw towns, cars naturally remain popular, and our Houghton County Memorial Airport continues to serve Copper Country fliers. Early airports . . .
August evenings in the Copper Country tend to be warm and relaxing, the type of atmosphere that invites people to sit on porches and savor the summer. For Calumet on August 13, 1983, evening peace would be impossible as a century of history vanished into the flames. In 1868, the place later called Calumet was . . .
Cross the Portage Lake Lift Bridge, northbound or southbound, or take a walk along the canal in Houghton, and you can’t help but notice it. The Jacobsville sandstone building standing on the Houghton end of the bridge has greeted passersby for well over a hundred years, serving an impressive array of purposes in its century . . .
What stands out in people’s memories? Ask that question of a dozen passersby, and you might get a dozen answers: weddings, births, graduations, special vacations. All of these examples are good, noble, and vivid. But, if we’re honest with ourselves, we might add something else to the list: we remember food. To give us a . . .
The Michigan Technological University Archives and Copper Country Historical Collections, a department within the J. Robert Van Pelt and John and Ruanne Opie Library, is currently accepting applications for its annual Travel Grant Program. The travel grant, which is returning after a brief hiatus, brings scholars and researchers to Michigan Technological University to work with . . .
To Copper Country locals, “White City” today evokes images of a sandy beach–a rarity in the Keweenaw–with the Huron Mountains’ verdant, distant slopes rising above a glistening Lake Superior. Visitors reach this beach by driving south from Lake Linden toward Jacobsville, following a winding township road that offers glimpses of Torch Lake. A hundred years . . .