Back in the day, when mining was king, Calumet,
Michigan, boasted a population of over 4,500. Today that total stands just under
800. Driving the streets of Calumet during our vacation in July, it didn’t seem
like a ghost town, but statistics look a little grim. What a shame. There is a
lot of history here.
And so now I am going to do something I never do on this blog. I am going to copy and paste information straight off the internet, telling you about these places. At the end of each blurb is the website which I borrowed from, but the pictures are all mine.
In 1900, Calumet was a booming town in the center
of Michigan's copper mining industry. The largest company in the region,
Calumet and Hecla, operated its works between the villages that became Calumet
and Laurium.
Mines drew a diverse population, including Cornish,
Scots, Italians, Finns, Swedes, Croatians, Slovenians, and French Canadians.
French Canadians, under the administration of Reverend J. R. Boissonault, built
a church dedicated to St. Anne. The architectural firm of Charlton, Gilbert and
Demar designed the structure, built of red sandstone from the Jacobsville
quarry.
Many of the building’s details derive from the
flamboyant of rayonnant style of the late Gothic period in France, reflecting
the heritage of its congregation. The sandstone is cut in square and
rectangular shapes and randomly laid. The stones of the piers, water table and
window surrounds are smoothly finished at the edge and hammer dressed toward
the center. Stepped lancet arches of the portals show indications of horizontal
tooling on the vertical faces of the arch.
Deconsecrated by the Catholic Church in 1966, the
building housed a flea market in the 1970s and 1980s and was the scene of a
horror movie early in the 1990s. Over three decades, the building was vacant or
underutilized. From 1966 to 1994, the building received no maintenance.
Beginning in 1994, efforts to rescue the building began. Volunteers, donations
and grants have reversed the pattern of neglect that nearly doomed one of
Calumet’s most significant and dominant structures. ( http://pasty.com/heritage/
)
(I couldn't find this church on the internet and I can't remember which church it was or even if it still had its church name, as I think it has been empty a long time.)
(A lot of the buildings downtown were vacant and up for sale. Got any ideas for a business you'd like to start up in the far North?)
At the turn of the twentieth century, the threat of
fire was constant in what was then a prosperous mining town.[2] The construction
of the fire station was started in 1898 and completed in 1899, using plans made
by architect C. K. Shand.[4] Although the station was built by the village of
Calumet (then "Red Jacket"), the lot on which it sits was leased from
the Calumet and Hecla Mining Company until 1910, when the company deeded it to
the village.[4] The total cost of the building at the time was just over
$20,000, including architectural work, stonework, and carpentry.[4]
In 1964, the fire department moved to the town hall
building.[2] The building was used in various ways, including rooms for summer
repertory performers at the nearby Calumet Theatre.[4] It now houses the Upper
Peninsula Fire Fighters Memorial Museum.[3]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calumet_Fire_Station
The Village of Calumet was incorporated in 1875
when it was the center of the copper mining industry in North America. As the
community grew, the Town Hall was built in 1886; and in 1898, with a huge
surplus in the treasury, it was decided that an opera house was needed to serve
the community. At that time the village had a population of approximately 4000
and more than 30,000 lived within walking distance.
The Theatre opened on March 20, 1900 with a touring
Broadway production of Reginald DeKoven's The Highwaymen. In the ensuing years,
the Theatre's marquee read like a Who's Who of American Theatre: Madame Helena
Modjeska, Lillian Russell, John Phillip Sousa, Sarah Bernhardt, Douglas
Fairbanks, Sr., Lon Chaney, Sr., Jason Robards, Sr., James O'Neill, William S.
Hart, Frank Morgan, Wallace and Noah Beery, and Madame Schumann-Heink, to name
a few.
With the decline of copper mining and the local
economy, and the advent of motion pictures, stage productions became less
common in the late 1920s. From the depression through the late 1950s, it was
almost exclusively a movie theatre, operated by several different local
interests over the years. Summer stock returned in 1958, ran for nearly 10
years, and then came back under the auspices of Michigan State University in
1972.
The auditorium was renovated for the village's
centennial in 1975, and the exterior was restored in 1988-89. The technical and
code improvements and backstage reconstruction have just been completed.
The Theatre annually hosts 60-80 events with a
total attendance of nearly 20,000. Nearly all of the performing arts
disciplines are represented, including symphony, folk music, jazz, opera,
theatre, dance, and community events, as well as public meetings and guided
tours.
The Calumet Theatre is a National Historic
Landmark. ( http://www.calumettheatre.com/about/26 )
I don’t know why I am so
fascinated with cemeteries. I suppose part of it is because I can envision an
entire life around each headstone, making up stories in my head as to how this
person died or how that person lived. Also, the headstones are sometimes works
of art, as well as the other adornments throughout the older cemeteries.
I think we are all
curious about what happens after we die. As a Christian, I believe I will go to
heaven, and don’t much care what happens to my body or where or how it is
disposed of (I just don’t want grave robbers digging me up). The thought of my
body lying in a casket buried under six feet of dirt really doesn’t do it for
me. Yet I’d still like a headstone in a cemetery somewhere, a reminder to
generations to come that this person lived from this date to this date and that
she had a sometimes boring, occasionally interesting life in between. 
As most men and
women, my husband and I have different views on how to enjoy vacation. We agree
on quite a few things, but one of my favorite vacation activities is looking at
old buildings. This is a pastime which I think the hubby could take or leave,
so I hate to overwhelm him with it and try to rein myself in.
