The Industrial Archaeology Summer 2015 Field School participated in excavation work at the Ransom Smelter on Isle Royale National Park. Their work was captured in the production titled Beneath the Wilderness: Revisiting Isle Royale’s Industrial Past from Ravenswood Media.
Video Summary: Seth DePasqual, Cultural Resources Manager National Park Service, partners with a team of industrial archeologists from Michigan Technological University to uncover a 19th century smelter on Isle Royale National Park. Known primarily as a wilderness area, Isle Royale was, for a short time, the center of copper mining in the United States. The National Park Service provides the student archeologists with a valuable experience in industrial archeology while gathering important information for park visitors about the island’s gritty industrial past.
