After John Haeussler’s rousing talk on the Copper Country’s contribution to Notre Dame Hockey last night, we’re all fired up as the Huskies take on the Fighting Irish tonight at the John MacInnes Ice Arena! The Michigan Tech Archives is equally excited to be working on preserving and improving access to some recently rediscovered film . . .
To this day, organizations fielding questions about Copper Country tourist attractions receive calls from people wanting to know, “Is Arcadian still open?” Visitors to our Keweenaw Peninsula often seek to immerse themselves in the industry that made our area famous. For many of them, this takes the form of a mine tour. Underground, with craggy . . .
When Alfred Nicholls came to Central Mine from his native Cornwall in May 1880, he confessed himself “not very favorably impressed with America,” including Central. Central would prove to be a place of great tragedy, perseverance, and triumph that changed his life in ways he never imagined. In finding Central Mine, Alfred Nicholls found his . . .
Jooseppi was born on the eve of great changes for Finland. Finns had been journeying to the New World since the mid-17th century, when a group of them ventured out as settlers to colonize Delaware for Sweden. As Armas K.E. Holmio, writing his seminal history of Michigan Finns, put it, despite the name, New Sweden . . .
Illness and injury are an unavoidable part of life, an unpleasant reality that all must confront at some inevitable point. In a nineteenth-century mining community, the truth of this statement seemed perhaps more palpable than in most societies. Men at work underground, at the surface, or in the mill regularly sustained injuries ranging from painful . . .
Behind every family business are two tales: the story of the business and the story of the family. Thurner Bakery in Calumet offers one such example. This week’s Flashback Friday provides another intimate illustration by visiting the Krackerbarrel. Students at Michigan Tech in the 1960s and 1970s would have known the little store as well . . .
‘Ruth Gibson Butler knew her own mind and had no qualms in expressing it. As a woman in the political sphere and someone passionate about the preservation of local history, she fit right in. Like many of the women profiled in prior blog posts–such as Lucena Brockway and her daughter Anna Brockway Gray–many of Ruth’s . . .
The history of Calumet is a history of fire. Each blaze in the village and its surroundings has been a tragedy, changing lives and claiming homes, businesses, gathering places, and houses of worship. The latest fire, which displaced dozens when it destroyed three buildings constructed between 1880 and 1900, is another part of a long . . .
Thurner Bakery was a family affair from the very beginning. At the start of its life in 1920, family businesses were hardly curiosities. Small storefronts neighbored Thurner’s all along Fifth Street in Calumet, many of them run with the assistance of a proprietor’s spouse, siblings, children, or grandchildren. By the time the bakery shut its . . .
Comfortably nestled in the shadow of the Quincy Mine–Old Reliable–Hancock became one of the Upper Peninsula’s preeminent towns and the Copper Country’s first city. Along its hillside and its two main thoroughfares, the commercial and artistic amenities of a large settlement sprang up: shops, taverns, performance halls. Catholic, Lutheran, Baptist, Methodist, and Episcopal churches, as . . .