This traveling exhibit explores 1913-1914 mining strike in Michigan's Copper Country. This remarkable and complex struggle between copper-mining corporations, mine owners and administrators, national labor organizations, governmental officials, local commercial and civic groups, and of course thousands of mine workers affected Copper Country residents from all walks of life.
The Keweenaw Digital Archives provides a searchable database of digitized historical photographs documenting Michigan's historic copper mining district. Photographs are drawn from regional institutions, including the MTU Archives & Copper Country Historical Collections, Keweenaw National Historical Park, the Houghton County Historical Society, and the Calumet Public School Library, this rich photographic fund provides a detailed look at the lives of copper miners and their families.
Michigan’s Upper Peninsula mining industries were important to the development of Michigan and the Lake Superior basin. In fact, Michigan’s Copper Country Peninsula served as a kind of interior Ellis Island—an entry point for tens of thousands of immigrants and their children into American society. This exhibit helps familiarize users with the complex community of ethnic and cultural backgrounds attracted to this urban outpost along the shores of Lake Superior.
This exhibit depicts Michigan’s Copper Country through the lens of commercial photographer J.W. Nara (1874-1934). Nara’s lens captured the people and places of Michigan’s Keweenaw Peninsula. The stories of copper mining and industry are given prominence as Nara's life spans the most productive decades in Michigan’s copper district. The lives of working folks are also captured—working underground in the mines, socializing at weekend picnics, and mourning the dead during Michigan’s bitter 1913 copper miners’ strike.
This photographic essay provides a visual introduction to the significant geological and mining activities which have drawn people to this region for centuries, the social aspects of the communities and lives which have occurred here, as well as the place that Michigan Technological University has had in these stories
Everyone has their own sense of what life was like in the 1950s. The early years of rock and roll, cars with big fins, and scenes from American Graffiti. But what about life here in the Copper Country? The Keweenaw Digital Archives holds more than 300 images from the 1950s.
An official University Seal displays the general scope and authority of an institution. This exhibit demonstrates the history of the Michigan Tech seal, from its humble beginnings in Michigan’s northern mining frontier, to the modern day.
This exhibit describes the USS Yantic, a 1864 wooden-hull gunboat from the Civil War. The Yantic was later stationed in Hancock, Michigan, and utilized as a training vessel for the United States Navy during the years 1907-17.
This exhibit describes the Bosch Brewing Company. Originally founded by Joseph Bosch in 1876 as Torch Lake Brewery, Joseph Bosch & Company, was the pinnacle of Upper Peninsula brewing from its humble beginnings until its closure in 1973.