This lesson is one in a series that brings the important stories of historic places into classrooms across the country. It was edited by the Teaching with Historic Places staff in collaboration with Kathleen Harter, Chief of Interpretation & Education at Keweenaw National Historical Park. The lesson was written by Ted Holmstrom, a teacher and resident of the former mining district, for Keweenaw National Historical Park in collaboration with the Copper Country Intermediate School District. This lesson is based on the National Register of Historic Places nomination files for the ' Quincy Mining Company Historic District' (with photos) and the archives of Keweenaw National Historic Park and Michigan Technological University, Library of Congress, and Ted Holstrom’s private collection. Today, it is a Keweenaw heritage site and a resource within the Keweenaw Historical Park. 2 Quincy Shaft-Rockhouse stopped copper mining operations in 1945. That year, the unionized miners went on a famous and deadly 8-month-long strike that changed mining and the very social fabric of Keweenaw forever. Conflicts over this paternalistic relationship and ethnic tensions reached a boiling point in 1913, when membership in the Western Federation of Miners union swelled. Mining companies attracted immigrants to this sparsely populated area with its company towns, where there were houses, hospitals, libraries, and schools ready to be filled.

The workers who settled in the mining towns of “Copper Country,” the Keweenaw Peninsula on Lake Superior, came from a variety of different ethnic European backgrounds, including Italian, Finnish, Slavic, German, Irish, and Cornish. Who produced this metal and how did they live? What was it like to work underground? 2 Shaft in the 19th century might have become a button on the uniform of a Civil War soldier, a wire for one of the first telephone poles, or part of the early electrical grid. The copper that passed through the Quincy Mining Company's candlelit No. This lesson is part of the National Park Service’s Teaching with Historic Places (TwHP) program.įor over 100 years, men ventured deep into mineshafts to reach the valuable copper deposits of Michigan's upper peninsula.

Ellis model 9000 drill press