Three days before Christmas in 1910, Stephen Boijt was working as a trammer in the E Shaft of the Champion mine, in Painesdale. He had just emptied his tram car into the skip on the 9th level. Two levels above, Alfred Davey, a trammer boss, and his crew rang the bell to signal the hoist ...

Mining-related fatalities in the Lake Superior copper mines may have gotten mentioned in the local newspapers, but rarely. Stories that bragged up mine owners and managers seemed to take precedence over deaths. For instance, in the December 8, 1909 edition of the Calumet News, the headline at ...

By 1912, it was impossible for an employee of a Lake Superior copper mine to find any semblance of true independence or freedom from his employer, particularly if he worked for a larger company like Calumet and Hecla, Quincy, or Champion. The employee rented a company-owned home on ...

Undoubtedly, the most curious person in American history must be Thomas Alva Edison, whose curiosity led him to become famous for his undying need to know more – leading to hundreds of useful inventions involving lighting to television. Rumor has it that he lost his hearing as a child due ...

February isn’t normally the month where I’m thinking about Spring. Last year on May 1, we had a snowfall that should only happen in January or February, and here we sit now where the snow comes, the snow goes, it accumulates, and then melts. As I venture further into my homesteading ...

Curtis Grubb Hussey first became interested in the Lake Superior copper region in 1844 when he invested heavily in the Pittsburgh and Boston Mining Company, which owned the Cliff Mine, on Keweenaw Point, along with the Northwestern and Central mines. Hussey, who made his initial fortune in dry ...