• Underground Tamarack Trammer Car

    Keweenaw

    National Historical Park Michigan

Keweenaw's Copper Story

From 7,000 years ago to the 1900s people mined Keweenaw copper. Native peoples made copper into tools and trade items. Investors and immigrants arrived in the 1800s in a great mineral rush, developing thriving industries and cosmopolitan communities. Though the mines have since closed, their mark is still visible on the land and people.

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.