Calumet

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 )

Back to Camping in the UP

Wednesday, July 28

I sprung out of bed around five Wednesday, because when I looked out the camper window the sun was just coming up. I raced off to the beach, watched the sunrise along Lake Superior and took way too many pictures. That is the wonderful thing about digital cameras – I can delete half these pictures without wasting a thing.

By 8:30 we were ready to roll and drove back to the Waterworks Park near Calumet, just so the Dino-master could play. Today the waves were much higher, white caps actually. Oh, my gosh, the dog was so funny. He’d wade out to his belly and then try to hold his ground as a wave approached. Just as it was about to hit him, he would turn and run back to shore, but never made it. The water was always faster.

When we left there we went down the road to Schoolcraft Cemetery just east of Calumet. Wow, what a sad place. Most of the burials were from the late 1800s, but the whole place was in total disrepair, trees and brush have taken over. Some of the headstones were fantastic, huge monoliths, but most were tipped over and sometimes broken in half. I just feel so bad when cemeteries look like that. I mean, even if the family is all gone or moved away, there still needs to be respect for their remains. All those people who died in the UP in the 1880s and 1890s made huge contributions to their communities, just by living and working there and keeping the mining industry going as long as they could. It seems such a shame.

Next we tried to find Gratiot Falls. Out of Ahmeek, there is a road called Five Mile Point Road, which is a scenic byway to Lake Superior. Along this road are the Farmer’s Block Roads (north, south and west). Very near these roads, on one of the maps I have, is a dot for Upper Gratiot Falls and one for Lower Gratiot Falls. As we drove along, we found a sign for Gratiot Falls Trailhead, so we thought, hot dog, that must take us there.

Well, we walked and walked and walked. I need to start carrying a pedometer; we had to have hiked a couple miles. Luckily this wasn’t just a trail, but was a logging road in better shape than a lot of the Michigan roads I’ve been on. But you can only wander the forest for so long before you say, maybe this isn’t going anywhere. I will have to try to find this on Google Earth and see if we were anywhere close to anything.

Water, waterfalls, and a jar of jam

August 17, 2009

From our hotel under the lift bridge in Hancock, Michigan, we took Hwy 41 to 203, which snakes along Portage Lake to McLain State Park.

We spent a lot of time wandering the beach, walking around the many picnic areas and recreation areas, drove through the campground. I think I convinced Himey that we need to try camping here next year. They have running water, electricity and hot showers, for Pete’s sake. It’s just like being at home only with fantastic views of Lake Superior. They even have mini-cabins for rent if the camping thing is too traumatic.

After McLain our next stop was the Calumet Township Park. Again, it was right on Lake Superior, had a beautiful beach, some sand and some rocks to pick. I almost lost my sandals in the water when I had to go wading in to rinse off some rocks. Himey was waiting for me to fall in.

The weather is beautiful, a little warm inland in the sun, but on the Lake, there was a little breeze keeping it comfortable. Not a cloud in the sky.

After getting gas in Calumet, we next pulled over at Eagle River Falls. The falls is over an old abandoned dam and really pretty. This is one of the few places that I have a picture of from when I was a kid. That picture turned out really well, the water was higher than. The neat thing about the falls in Eagle River is that you can practically see it from your car; nice for people who can’t hike some rabbit path through the woods, but not a good thing for me, because I like to explore.

Jacobs Falls was twenty minutes later. Again, you can see it from your car, and I mean right from your car, because the falls is twenty feet from Hwy 26 and then the stream goes under the road. There really isn’t a good place to park right there, but just a hundred feet or so down the road there is a parking lot for Jampot, the gift shop of the monks of the Society of St. John. I don’t remember it being here before, but their newsletter says that they have been there for 25 years. I will have to study my notes from previous trips and see if I mention it at all. We naturally had to buy goodies from the monks.

The Lake Superior shoreline at McLain State Park

Eagle River Falls in lovely downtown Eagle River, Michigan

Jacob Falls, just down the road from the Jampot