2021 Museum Insider

The Calumet & Hecla Mining Company Warehouse #1 is seen here in Calumet. The historic warehouse will soon be rehabilitated as a state of the art museum storage and curatorial facility for the Lake Superior Collection Management Center.

Historic C&H Warehouse #1 Rehabilitation Planning In Progress

The Lake Superior Collection Management Center (LSCMC), based at Keweenaw National Historical Park in Calumet, cares for the museum and archival collections of Isle Royale National Park, Keweenaw National Historical Park, and Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore. LSCMC staff is working to eliminate sub-standard museum storage facilities and consolidate these valuable collections in efficient, secure, and environmentally controlled storage facilities.

Toward that end, the comprehensive rehabilitation of the historic Calumet & Hecla Mining Company (C&H) Warhouse #1 in Calumet is finally underway. The red brick 28,000 square foot building will become an up-to-date museum storage facility for the cultural objects and natural history specimens that are part of the museum collections of the LSCMC parks. Curatorial work space will also be included in the building, where objects will be documented, cleaned, conserved, cataloged, photographed, and properly housed before being put into storage. Conceptual planning for the project regarding programatic needs, desired adjacencies, and everything necessary for the basic functioning of the facility and pre-design work has been completed. Plans will be refined in the design development phase of the project to follow, construction drawings will be produced, and work on the building is expected to commence, perhaps as early as the fall of 2023.

Historically, Warehouse #1 served as the main supply depot for C&H, with supply department offices at the front of the first floor. The rest of the building was used to store all of the various tools and materials necessary to support the work of underground mining and the many surface shops and work crews the company employed in and around Calumet. Since Keweenaw National Historical Park acquired the building in 2002, its historic wood windows and storm windows were rehabilitated, and the electrical system in the building was replaced. However, the roof is well past the end of its functional lifespan and is leaking, the building is uninsulated, the sprinkler system is no longer operational, the freight elevator in the building does not meet current safety codes, and there is little by way of environmental control in the building, except an outdated heating system in a small part of the first floor. Proposed changes in the building include addressing all of these and other critical needs to make it a properly functional museum storage facility. As planning for the rehabilitation progresses, other projects are also underway to ensure that all object and specimen collections from the three parks are properly documented and cataloged, so that everything will be in order in time to move in.

While continuing the historic use of the building as a storage facility, many alterations will be necessary to bring the building up to professional museum standards. Oversight will be integrated throughout the planning and construction processes to make sure that all changes are sympathetic to the historic character of the building and do not alter its most significant character defining features. Changes to less significant historic features of the building will be made in a way that is fully reversible, to allow for future restoration if necessary. The building, itself an important resource in Keweenaw NHP, will be preserved and given new life in a way that maximizes its utility, contributes to the preservation of other resources, and respects its past.

 

A ninety-three year old confection is seen here in a small glass jar sealed with wax. This jar of candy was on board the America when the ship sank at Isle Royale in 1928. It survived the wreck unscathed and was later unlawfully salvaged by sport divers, who recently returned it.

93 Year Old Candy in Sealed Jar Salvaged from the America Returned to Isle Royale

Isle Royale National Park preserves the ecosystems, natural resources, and cultural resources of the Isle Royale archipelago, which includes about 400 islands in northwestern Lake Superior. Park boundaries and protection also extend into the waters of Lake Superior surrounding these islands, and to the many natural and cultural resources found in the water and on the bottomlands within the boundaries.

Some of the most fascinating cultural resources found in the waters of Isle Royale are the remains of ships which met their fate on the reefs and shoals surrounding the islands. Some of these vessels were not frequent callers at island ports, and so were unfamiliar with that part of the lake. Others had a long association with the island, but succumbed to adverse weather conditions, high seas, or other calamities. No vessel was so closely associated with the island prior to the establishment of the national park, perhaps, than the America.

The SS America, a 183-foot packet boat with fifty-one staterooms, managed by the U.S. & Dominion Transportation Company, made regular runs between Duluth, Thunder Bay, Isle Royale, and other small ports in western Lake Superior. The ship ran aground on an underwater reef outside of Washington Harbor early in the morning of June 7, 1928, and slowly sank.

Some of the most beautiful and intriguing cultural history objects in the Isle Royale museum collection come from the island’s shipwrecks. Recently, a collection of artifacts removed from the wreck of the America in the 1960s was returned to the park. Included in the collection was a small glass jar, sealed with wax, containing sticks of candy, all completely intact.

At that time, laws against removing artifacts from the wrecks in island waters were not strictly enforced. Sport divers illegaly salvaged many choice objects from many of the wrecks. Now that the laws are better understood and enforced, many divers, of their own volition, have begun to do the right thing and return these items to the National Park Service, where they can be properly cared for and enjoyed by all the American people, to whom they belong.

 

Donating to the Lake Superior CMC

The national parks of Lake Superior were established to preserve and interpret nationally significant natural and cultural resources of the region.

Some of these resources are too big to miss – including cliffs and forests, lakes and streams, lighthouses and shaft-rockhouses – but the NPS also preserves smaller-scale resources such as biological specimens, miners’ lunch pails, commercial fishing nets, historic business records, and family photographs.

The National Park Service’s primary purpose in collecting nationally significant objects, specimens, and documents is to preserve them for posterity. These items are also available for research use, and contribute to educational exhibits both virtual and physical, such as the Risk and Resilience exhibit at the Calumet Visitor Center. However, these secondary uses are always carefully managed so that the primary goal of preserving the museum objects and archival materials is not compromised.

Many items in the collections were donated by current and former Upper Peninsula families who wished to see their own family history preserved, and others who wanted to contribute to the broader understanding of the history of these special places. The National Park Service is very grateful to donors for their foresighted generosity.

Donating material to a professionally managed museum or archival repository will ensure that the donated items will be properly cared for in years to come. Professional repositories in the Upper Peninsula include the Central Upper Peninsula and Northern Michigan University Archives, found online at www.nmu.edu/archives/, Michigan Technological University Archives and Copper Country Historical Collections, found online at www.mtu.edu/library/archives/, Finlandia University Finnish American Heritage Center Archives and Museum, found online at finlandia.edu/FAHAM, and the Lake Superior Collection Management Center at Keweenaw National Historical Park, found online at www.nps.gov/kewe. Each institution has a different mission and policy for selecting material they will collect. Please contact them directly if you have any questions.

If you are interested in donating material to the LSCMC, please contact the Museum Curator at [phone], or [e-mail].

 

Emily Riippa, an archivist at the Michigan Technological University Archives and Copper Country Historical Collections in Houghton is seen here with fourth grade students participating in the primary sources station in the LSCMC archives reading room in Calumet at Copper TRACES in 2019.

Copper TRACES Primary Source Station Introduces Upper Peninsula 4th Graders to Archival Research

Each May between 2016 and 2019, hundreds of fourth grade students from schools across the west-central Upper Peninsula converged on Keweenaw National Historical Park for a field day learning about various aspects of the natural and cultural history of the Keweenaw Peninsula and Isle Royale.

Over the course of the three-day event, each school was assigned a day to particpate, on which students learned about geology, mining methods, wildlife, and chain migration, among many other topics. Classes were usually broken up into two smaller groups, and each group visited a series of stations dedicated to various subjects, along with lunch in the ballroom at the Calumet Colosseum at mid-day. Stations were developed and presented by Keweenaw NHP and Isle Royale NP staff, and volunteers from the Keweenaw Heritage Sites and other partners. Additional volunteers provided assistance to the visiting teachers and chaperones, and station leaders. Pictured Rocks NL also provided law enforcement assistance. It was a huge event, and many volunteers helped to make it a great success.

Each year, staff from the LSCMC archives collaborated with staff from the Michigan Technological University Archives and Copper Country Historical Collections to present a station in the reading room at the NPS archives at Calumet, focused on primary source material and how it may be used for research. Most of the students had already been introduced to the concept of primary (unpublished) and secondary (published) sources, but for many of them, this was the first opportunity they had to see them in person and use them for research.

In small groups, utilizing both NPS and Michigan Tech collections, the students researched an historic building pictured in a puzzle they put together made from an historic photograph. Different types of historic documents were introduced by the archivists. The students learned more about their building by critically evaluating plans, other photos, and Sanborn fire insurance maps, and compared and contrasted what they learned about life in the Copper Country in the past with their own life experiences. Organizers plan a return of the event in 2023.

 

Doing Research at the LSCMC Archives

Archival collections at the Lake Superior Collection Management Center include collections from Isle Royale National Park, Keweenaw National Historical Park, and Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore. Collections include National Park Service records, as well as acquired historic business records, organizational records, personal and family papers, and photographs. If you are interested in researching these collections, please contact the LSCMC archivist to make an appointment.

The Lake Superior Collection Management Center Archives is located in the Keweenaw History Center, in the historic Calumet and Hecla Mining Company Public Library building at the southeast corner of Red Jacket Road and Mine Street in Calumet. Plans for the rehabilitation of the historic library building include changes to allow for universal accessibility. In the meantime, please notify LSCMC staff if you are not able to navigate stairs, and they will arrange accommodations for you in another building.

If you are interested in researching family history in the Keweenaw, the Michigan Technological University Archives and Copper Country Historical Collections is the best place to start. It has comprehensive collections of local mining company records and Houghton County directories, along with many other collections. The archives, located at the J. R. Van Pelt and Opie Library on the Michigan Tech campus in Houghton, is open Tuesday through Thursday from 1PM to 5PM, by appointment. Please visit the Michigan Tech Archives website for more information or to make an appointment.

 

This Maidenhair Fern (Adiantum pendatum L., CAT # PIRO 256) was
collected on the Lakeshore Trail between the Cliffs backcountry site and Miners Castle on August 12th 1980 by Seasonal Rangers Jennifer Walker and Mike Arduser.

From the Collections of Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore:

This beautiful professionally mounted complete specimen is one of 360 herbarium specimens from Pictured Rocks. Collected mainly between 1979 and 2000, they provide a cursory record of the lakeshore’s flora during this time period. It provides a frame of reference in view of potential future shifts in the plant community due to invasive species, air quality, or climate change impacts.

The species identification by Walker and Arduser was confirmed by State Botanist Anton A. Reznicek of the University of Michigan in 2017. His handwritten note suggests this species belongs in the family Polypodiaceae (common ferns), rather than the traditional Pteridaceae (maidenhair ferns). However, the Integrated Taxonomic Information System still classifies it as part of family Pteridaceae (Maidenhair ferns).

Much botanical taxonomy is under revision as genetic analyses reveal phylogenetic connections previously not recognized by purely morphological comparisons. The catalog record and labels for this and other specimens will be updated when the Integrated Taxonomic Information System database is updated with new information.