As World War I raged across Europe, copper prices rose and European immigration to the U.S. came to a standstill. Immigrants from Mexico and Central and South America arrived in Michigan's Copper Country, filling laboring jobs and helping the mining companies meet the War's great demand for copper. Paul Mareno immigrated from Mexico to Texas in 1913, working on construction projects in Chicago before arriving in Michigan at Winona in 1916. While employed there as a trammer, he met and soon married Finnish immigrant Josephine Nisula. The newlyweds made their home in Calumet Township, where Paul, recorded as Pavlo in C&H records, worked as a trammer for the Calumet & Hecla (C&H) Mining Company. They lived in the company's Hecla housing location in house 1560 (shown) for many years before moving to Swedetown when Paul was reassigned to work at Osceola No. 13.
The growing Mareno family spent the summer of 1926 working at a farm in Trout Creek, Ontonagon County, and like many families returned to farming when Paul's work for C&H dried up during the Great Depression. During the more than a decade Paul worked for the company, his labor supported his adoptive country in its industrial and wartime efforts, both at home and overseas. The family's trajectory from industrial work during World War I to farming during the Great Depression was one shared by many in rural areas across the nation.
