Michigan Technological University. Archives & Copper Country Historical Collections

In the summer of 1972, the Michigan Technological University Archives and Copper Country Historical Collections became a Regional Depository for state, county and municipal documents. Working through the Michigan State Archives, governmental agencies may place certain noncurrent records on deposit in the Archives for use by residents, genealogists and historical researchers. The region embraces six counties in Michigan's western Upper Peninsula: Iron and Gogebic counties and the four Copper Country counties of Houghton, Keweenaw, Baraga and Ontonagon. Governmental records currently on deposit are predominantly from Houghton and Keweenaw counties and include survey and tax records, voting rolls, Circuit Court documents (including divorce decrees), jail records and records of district school boards.

In 1975 a grant was submitted to the National Endowment for the Humanities by the Michigan History Division to inventory county and municipal records in three regional depositories: Burton Historical Collections at the Detroit Public Library; Clarke Historical Libraries at Central Michigan University; Archives and Copper Country Historical Collections at Michigan Technological University; and Western Michigan University. Each of the institutions would conduct on site supervision with students hired to conduct the inventories. The result would be an appraisal of local records analyzing general retention and disposal schedules and would indicate which records could be preserved or discarded. Regional depositories would then accession or microfilm records selected for preservation.

The Daily Mining Gazette is a newspaper published in Houghton, Michigan. The paper is also distributed over most of the Upper Peninsula and some northern parts of the Lower Peninsula of Michigan. It is a daily Monday through Friday, with an expanded, combined Saturday-Sunday edition. The Gazette began as a weekly in 1858 before becoming a daily in 1898.

Extreme Low Frequency (ELF) radio signals are considered useful for one-way communication to submarines because they penetrate seawater to depths of several hundred feet. ELF is the only available system which, according to the US Navy, will allow continuous contact with submarines while they are at patrol depth and cruising speed. The history of ELF started with Sanguine which was to be a hardened system comprising over a hundred buried transmitters and 6,000 miles of underground cable covering 6,500 square miles. When that wasn't accepted the Navy proposed SEAFARER (Surface ELF Antenna For Addressing REmotely-deployed Receivers) with three above-ground transmitters and 2,400 miles of buried cable occupying 4,700 square miles. Then it was scaled down to Austere ELF with two surface transmitters and 158 miles of cable - 130 miles of it buried along utility and roadway right-of-ways. Then there was Project ELF, still with two transmitters and only 84 miles of cable hung on utility poles. In 2004 the US Navy ended Project ELF, citing improvements in communication technology that rendered ELF obsolete as well as the changing requirements of the modern Navy.

Established in 1921, the Michigan Tech Lode is a weekly, student-produced, campus newspaper. It includes campus and local news and events, sports, editorials, and classifieds.

At White Pine Mine, the underground mine was operated from the late 1800s through September 1995. Calumet & Hecla Mining Company was the first company to mine the White Pine Mine; however, a drop in copper prices closed the mine in 1920 and led to Copper Range Company's purchase of the property in 1929 at a sheriff's sale. Initial mining focused on native copper within the Nonesuch Formation. Between 1937 and 1950, activities at the mine focused primarily upon research and development of the ore body. In early 1952, when advances in mining processes verified that the copper mineral chalcocite could be successfully smelted, construction of the existing mine facility began and the first ore was mined a year later. Physical development and start of operations of the mill and smelting facilities occurred in 1954. The first copper from the new mine facility was produced in January 1955. In 1977, Copper Range Company was purchased by the Louisiana Land and Exploration Company. The refinery and continuous casting operations were added to the mine complex in 1981. Most of the operations were suspended in 1982 followed by a temporary shutdown in 1984 for approximately 12 months. Echo Bay Mines Limited purchased CRC in January 1985. In November of 1985, CRC employees, through an Employee Stock Ownership Plan ("ESOP"), bought and operated CRC until May 1989. At that time, the majority of CRC stock was purchased by a wholly owned subsidiary of Inmet Mining Corporation (formerly Metall Mining Corporation)

Leo Roy, who died in 1968, played hockey for Houghton High School and Portage Lake in the 1920s. After playing for a Hurontown team known as "Radio 6," Leo Roy played for Michigan Tech University from 1926-28, including the first championship hockey team. In 1948, he was elected to the Michigan State Legislature as the senator for the 32nd district and served in this position for 10 years. While serving in the Michigan Senate, Roy promoted projects that would benefit the Copper Country, including obtaining money for the first artificial ice at Dee Stadium, Michigan Technological University's home stadium at the time.

The Michigan Technological University Archives and Copper Country Historical Collections in Houghton, Michigan, houses a wide variety of print, graphic and manuscript resources. Subject coverage includes University and campus life, towns and cities in the Keweenaw, and the companies, social organizations, events and personalities of the Copper Country and Michigan's Upper Peninsula.

The mill at Alberta was developed by the Ford Motor Company in the 1930s, during Ford's expansion of it's lumbering operations in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Ford operated several mills and wood product fabrication facilities in the UP, including operations at Munising, Big Bay, Pequaming, Sidnaw, and a large, multi-purpose complex in Iron Mountain/Kingsford. Alberta, however, was designed by Ford to serve not only as a lumber milling site, but also as an experiment in community building. Ford's experience with village industries - developing manufacturing facilities in smaller towns or rural areas - dated to 1918 with the creation of small factories along river sites in southeastern lower Michigan. Ford's plan for Alberta included a community of homes and schools to be built at the mill site, with each worker logging a sixty-acre company parcel and farming a two-acre farm plot. The idea was to provide double security for workers by conducting winter logging operations and summer milling and farming activities. Ultimately, Ford's plans never came to fruition at Alberta. Although the mill started operation on September 1, 1936, the company soon turned to outside jobbers to provide logs to what eventually became a year-round operation. The soil proved difficult to farm, and deer ate what few crops could be grown. With its well-constructed company housing and schools, Alberta continued as a good example of a small company mill town. But lacking any stores, churches, post office, bank, or doctor, it never became the self-contained village Ford intended. Ford continued intermittent production at the site until June 30, 1954. The mill, housing, schools, and over 1700 acres of adjacent timberland were bequeathed to the Michigan College of Mining and Technology on November 30, 1954, the gift of property having passed through the Ford Motor Company Fund. The site was renamed the Ford Forestry Center and currently operates as an experimental research station, educational laboratory, and learning center for the School of Forestry and Wood Products at Michigan Technological University. On March 17, 1997, the Ford Motor Company fund made a contribution of $100,000 toward the rehabilitation and restoration of the mill as an interpretive center for the general public. Shortly thereafter, a committee consisting of MTU administrators, faculty and staff, as well as retired Ford employees and local community sponsors, was organized to carry out the funded restoration project, prepare interpretive exhibits, and establish operating procedures for the site. As part of this project, the MTU Archives was selected as the permanent repository for archival material uncovered during the project and additional material received from future visitors to the site.

An extensive deposit of reddish brown and white stone, called Potsdam or Lake Superior sandstone, outcrops along the eastern shore of the Keweenaw Peninsula. George Craig, Senior, first identified the rock₂s potential commercial value in the late 1860s or early 1870s, according to different reports. Despite the quality of the sandstone, Craig was unable to develop the necessary capital to open and operate a successful quarry. In 1883, John Henry Jacobs, for whom the village of Jacobsville is named, obtained a lease on the Craig property and began quarrying operations as Furst, Jacobs and Company. Jacobs₂ other regional business interests included Wolf & Company Quarry in Marquette, later called the Marquette Brownstone Company. Jacobs₂ father-in-law, Peter Wolf, marketed the attractive Keweenaw stone, which came to be known as Jacobsville sandstone, in Chicago. The stone was a desirable building material and was used extensively in residential and commercial buildings throughout the United States. Jacobs maintained a financial interest in the Keweenaw quarrying industry until 1902. At one time there were four quarries operating at Portage Entry. By 1899, Furst, Jacobs & Co., which bought out a number of small operations through the years, and Portage Red Stone Company merged and reorganized as the Portage Entry Quarries Company. By 1919, the best beds of stone that could be economically removed were depleted, and large scale quarrying operations ceased at Jacobsville. During the days of peak production, the sandstone quarries at Portage Entry were the third largest industry in the Copper Country.

The Upper Peninsula Newspaper Project was a joint venture between the Clarke Historical Library at Central Michigan University and the University Archives at Michigan Technological University. The project was established to preserve the newspapers of Michigan's Upper Peninsula. For a number of years the two institutions were separately involved in microfilming newspapers. They decided to combine their resources and begin a systematic approach to ensure the preservation of newspapers that serve local communities.

The project was ultimately replaced by the Michigan Newspaper Project in cooperation with the United States Newspaper Program, a national project supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities.