• Underground Tamarack Trammer Car

    Keweenaw

    National Historical Park Michigan

Calumet Unit

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The Calumet Unit of Keweenaw National Historical Park focuses on the preservation and interpretation of buildings and sites associated with the former Calumet & Hecla Copper Mining Company. The U.S. Congress determined that the Calumet area was essential to telling the story of copper mining on the Keweenaw Peninsula.

The corporate-sponsored community planning in Calumet, Michigan, as evidenced in the architecture, municipal design, surnames, foods, and traditions, and the large scale corporate paternalism was unprecedented in American industry and continues to express the heritage of the district. The... picture of copper mining on Michigan's Keweenaw Peninsula is best represented by... the Village of Calumet, (and) the former Calumet & Hecla Mining Company properties.
From the park's enabling legislation.

There are two primary components to the Calumet Unit: The former Calumet & Hecla Copper Mining Company Industrial Operations and Downtown Calumet. Several Keweenaw Heritage Sites are located within the Calumet Unit. These include the Calumet Theatre, Coppertown Mining Museum, Keweenaw Heritage Center and the Upper Peninsula Firefighters Memorial Museum.

Did You Know?

Miners pose outside the #5 Tamarack Mine shaft in this 1908 photograph by Adolph F. Isler. Keweenaw NHP Archives.

The Keweenaw Peninsula of Michigan was home to one of our nation's first mineral rushes. Prospectors seeking copper travelled there in the middle 1840's, a few years before the "49'ers" sought gold out west. The story of this rush is told today at Keweenaw National Historical Park.