1. Then Things Changed

The Keweenah Peninsula, Copper Country

Immense lodes of copper were discovered on Michigan’s northern peninsula (the Keewenaw) in the mid nineteenth century. Shortly afterwards, immigrants, many from the copper and tin-rich region of Cornwall, England, arrived by the thousands to work the mines. By the turn of the 20th century, increasingly efficient mining technology sustained thriving communities.

Copper’s heyday on the peninsula (the U.P.) continued until the 20’s when the lodes gradually petered out; mining had virtually ceased on the Keewenah by the 1960’s.

These days, the region's economy depends pirmarily on tourism (somewhat limited, at that). Calumet, the main town, is struggling along, with every other storefront closed.

While nature has smoothed over much of the decades of man-made devastation, one doesn’t have to look hard to find remains: abandoned mine buildings and machinery, twisted railroad tracks.
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  • The abandoned train depot in the city of Calumet, where the likes of Douglas Fairbanks, Lon Chaney, John Phillip Sousa and Sarah Bernhardt alighted to perform at the Calumet Theater. Like the entire Keweenah, Calumet is a ghost of its former self. The two main streets hint at a once thriving economy; solid brick buildings, now with mostly empty storefronts.
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  • When I walked the streets of Calumet, I felt I was immersed in an Edward Hopper painting. My sister, who has a summer place forty-five minutes from here, says this is the worst pizza for miles!
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  • Remains of the Delaware Mine stamping mill, 1846.
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  • Collapsed stamping structure of unknown purpose, built in “1927”.
  • Perhaps the most striking example of copper mining’s legacy is the remains of the Wolverine milling facility which, over five decades, spewed forth some 25 million tons of “stamp sands” that cover miles of lake shore to this day. The occasional wine of dirt bikes and ATVs speeding over the sterile plain has replaced the din of  pounding machinery.

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