[tranquil instrumental music, birds calling]
Seth DePasqual: Isle Royale is one of the least visited parks
in the National Park System.
However, [it] happens to be
one of the most re-visited parks.
It’s clearly like a getaway for people
that they just kind of want to fling themselves
into the woods and the wilderness.
But they also come for the culture resources.
People are absolutely interested
in all the different things that this island has to offer.
For thousands of years, Native Americans would come
to Isle Royale interested in its copper resource.
They would paddle over from the North Shore until they saw
a natural fissure in the rock where they noticed copper.
And they would work the copper load,
the copper fissure, all the way up to this location right here,
hacking away at the copper,
using rocks to knock the copper away from the host rock
and the bedrock, until they would eventually stop.
Euro-American miners came much, much later,
saw these very features, and used them as clues
as to where they should mine themselves.
[birds chirping]
In 1843 it becomes a frenzy of mining activity,
and this was the place to mine and extract copper.
And absolutely this is a wilderness park,
but it had a gritty past, and that is mining heritage.
And its industrial history is just as significant
as its natural history, because the first thing that happens
in a location is industry.
You know, why do we situate ourselves
in a particular location in the first place?
It’s usually because of a resource.
[birds calling]
And so when we study industrial heritage, we’re learning more
about who we are as a people, why are we here
in the first place?
And so we have an archaeological excavation going on right now,
and we’re interested in learning more
about the historic copper smelting site,
operated between 1846 and 1848.
This research will impact park management
in a number of different ways.
Archaeologist: Well, your stuff is kind of a lot darker.
Yeah.
Seth DePasqual: First, it’s going to provide information,
and we’re really interested in what this place was,
why it’s here, how it came to be.
And that, of course— the information will inform
our park interpretive programs so that the visitors can learn
more about the island’s past, but also it provides
great opportunity to invigorate new partnerships.
We’ve been working with Michigan Tech
for a few years now and bringing out students
who are interested in industrial heritage
to practice their trade is to the Park Service’s advantage,
because I am an army of one.
I cannot conduct an archaeological excavation
like this on my own.
So bringing students out to learn with us
is to bring that heritage to the fore
so people understand that it had this gritty past,
this industrial past.
And it’s just a great opportunity for students
to conduct archaeology in a national park setting
and also to learn about mining heritage
across numerous landscapes.
Adrian Blake: Hey, Seth? I think we found something interesting.
Seth DePasqual: That's nice. Do you know what that is?
Adrian Blake: Looks like copper to me.
Seth DePasqual: It is. It is. It’s, um...
Adrian Blake: The Park Service has been very accommodating.
They've given us sort of free reign over this site here.
And so to work on a site like this, the oldest copper smelter
in America's first copper mining region, that's quite exciting.
This is some pretty interesting stuff
we're doing here that's quite interesting.
We're going to learn quite a lot
as to how people tended to cope in this mining frontier.
I'm quite thrilled, actually, for an opportunity like this—
to come out here in a place like Isle Royale
just to work in a national park.
The scenery is quite nice,
so when you're not actually working, it's quite enjoyable
to be out here.
But there's more than just the natural beauty here
on the island.
There's also a very deep and rich human history, as well,
and to tell the whole story of the park is to appreciate
its industrial legacy as well.
Smelting is included in that picture
because of the nature of...
Patrick E. Martin, PhD: History is important, because we
can't really imagine who we are or where we're going,
unless we know something about where we've been.
And the Park Service found an opportunity
to uncover the history here.
And information of this sort enriches the lives
of park visitors in powerful ways.
And to my mind, that's a major mission of the Park Service.
[tranquil instrumental music, birds chirping]