C&H Library/future Keweenaw History Center

U.S. National Park Service

This striking stone building with its façade of contrasting red and gray mine rock was the Calumet & Hecla community library, built in 1898 for the use of mine workers and their families.

Today this key historic building in Calumet is owned by the Keweenaw National Historic Park, whose headquarters is in the former C&H office across the street. It houses the park's paper conservation lab and processing area for its growing collections of papers, C&H blueprints and other documents, and objects relating to C&H and other elements of the multifaceted park. Offices of park interpreters, curators, and historians are here. (Donations of materials about the copper mining story are most welcome, especially diaries and letters revealing everyday life, and even things like a made-in-Japan souvenir of Copper Country mines. Call 906-337-3168.)

Long-range plans call for a Keweenaw History Center, open to the public, possibly housing the Houghton County Genealogical Society.

Meanwhile, in summer the park staff offers tours of this most interesting building, typically on Tuesday or Thursday. Check a sign posted on the door, or call 906-337-3168.

Altruism was far from the only motivation of longtime C&H CEO Alexander Agassiz for erecting this splendid building, which also contained a basement bathhouse for C&H families and a second-floor meeting room. He felt that employees who went to church, stayed home, played in bands, read books, and avoided saloons were easier to control, especially when they rented company houses from which they could be evicted with little notice. Michigan Tech history professor Larry Lankton explored the many sides of corporate paternalism in Cradle to Grave: Life, Work and Death at the Lake Superior Copper Mines, a revealing study for which he read much C&H internal correspondence.

The library was designed by a Boston architect related to the company's principal investor, Quincy Adams Shaw. Reading rooms were on the second floor, including one where men could smoke, with a meeting room on the top floor. All library books were carefully reviewed by C&H president Agassiz and superintendant James MacNaughton to be sure they did not contain material that would support union causes: worker safety, organizing, striking, and related issues. Muckraking authors like Upton Sinclair wouldn't be found here!

The interior remains very much as it must have looked when Calumet and Hecla reigned supreme in these parts. The varnished interior trim has never been painted or refinished. There are classic oak desks and map cases, cases of mineral specimens, and a big oil portrait of Alexander Agassiz, son of the famed Harvard botanist Louis Agassiz. Agassiz would rather have devoted himself entirely to scientific research. He was persuaded to spend part of his time managing Calumet and Hecla, while still living in Boston. He did this for most of his life and served as C&H president from 1871 until his death in 1910. Money from C&H paid for Agassiz's zoological and oceanographic investigations. C&H's Bostonian paternalism was widely resented here as controlling and condescending.

East of the office building is a big piece of float copper - pure copper formed in pockets created by volcanic bubbles. Such pure copper is found along the Keweenaw Fault, but almost nowhere else in the world. Outside is a bronze statue of Agassiz. His cold, analytical gaze follows you unsettlingly as you shift your point of view.

On Red Jacket Road, just west of U.S. 41 by the turnoff to Calumet. (906) 337-0202. Check sign on door for tour times, or call. Not handicap-accessible.

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