Coppertown Mining Museum and Gift Shop

Skilled patternmakers at C&H made wood patterns used in making sand castings for many kinds of cast iron parts used in mining equipment and other applications. When mining ceased, the pattern shop continued, making specialty parts for outside customers. Veteran employees helped recreate the pattern shop for the Coppertown Musuem.

An excellent overview of copper mining, from both economic and social standpoints, is given by the 13-minute video that begins a museum visit here. Mining aficionados, woodworkers, and people with an interest in machines and foundries or in labor history won't want to miss this museum.
The building originally housed the C&H pattern shop. Here skilled craftsmen made white pine patterns used in the foundry next door (now demolished) for making sand molds for casting iron parts and objects.

A museum highlight is the realistic life-size room setting of the pattern shop with two workers. It clearly shows the steps in pouring and casting molten iron in sand molds—a vital part of many, many Michigan industries including the auto industry, yet invisible and unknown to the general public. The shop's dim light and earthy colors make this an evocative scene.

Pattern-making in the days before computer-aided design was not just an industrial trade but a craft — really an art requiring not only precision but intuition. The handsome wood patterns themselves, precisely turned on lathes and colored black, russet, tan, or natural, have a powerful aesthetic appeal apart from their function. Don't miss the 5-foot drive gear with handmade teeth.

The C&H gray iron foundry cast 30,000 specially designed parts, mostly for the gears, bushings, and other parts used in mining and processing C&H copper. In the 1940s and 1950s, as mining operations declined, the shop made special orders for outside customers - everything from keys for Marquette Prison to a giant blower for American Blower of Detroit.

The rest of the museum includes a lot of older and newer mining equipment. It's a treasure for the mechanically minded. Generalists with little mining background might be overwhelmed if they don't seek out the museum's real highlights, and if they don't gain a conceptual framework through which to view all the details. They might even want to see the video a second time.

Coppertown was started in the 1970s by local history enthusiasts. At that time it was still able to draw on the experience and memories of people who had worked in the pattern shop not that long ago, which gives the museum a palpable authenticity. Museum professionals planned some displays. This is a much better conceived museum than many local mining museums.

Cornish mining customs introduced company-provided medical care to Copper Country. At Coppertown, authentic equipment has been used to recreate the C&H dispensary.

Other highlights include

• A version of the C&H medical dispensary created from artifacts of various periods. It shows how general health care for miners, like many aspects of the mining system in Lake Superior mines, was a practice carried over from mines in Cornwall.

• a handmade model of the village and industrial corridor of Calumet. See how the town grew up around mine shafts, which are no longer visible. Mine Street (now largely a shopping center and vacant space) was lined with mine shafts and above-ground support facilities for mining operations. Many of these buildings — any that had no prospects for reuse — were demolished after the mine shut down.

• a display on the Strike of 1913, conveying the miners' point of view.

• a display on the Italian Hall disaster, complete with photographs of the much-discussed arrangement of doors that contributed to the disaster. The doors on display are later doors, says Steve Lehto, author of Death's Doors, a respected book on the subject.

If you're interested and patient, you can learn how usable copper was produced from copper-bearing rock, and understand crushers, smelters, and stamping mills. There's a collection of copper specimens, a gallery of photos of C&H industrial operations, a still-operating old shoe shop (originally on Fifth St) where niners' boots and shoes were made, and a mini-school room with old-fashioned desks. (A $1 copy of "Rules for Schoolteachers" is a popular gift.)

Coppertown's web site, www.uppermichigan.com/coppertown explains the process of casting metal parts and highlights the exhibits on ancient copper miners, the two-man drill, and the Sheffield pump car.

The gift shop plays a role in supporting this worthwhile museum. It includes mineral specimens, souvenirs, and a well-chosen collection of local history books, largely on mining. C. Harry Benedict's Red Metal: The Calumet & Hecla Story, published by Coppertown, is only available here.

25815 Red Jacket Rd. between U.S. 41 and downtown Calumet. (906) 337-4354. Open from June thru mid Oct. Mon-Sat 10-5. In July & August also open Sundays 12:30-4. Adults $3 (with NPS passports $2), children 12-18 $1. Under 12 free. Wheelchair access: from front walk, not parking lot.
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