HOUGHTON -Among the countless materials housed at the Michigan Technological University Archives and Copper Country Historical Collections are extensive mining company records.

“We’re stewards of three major mining company collections,” said Lindsay Hiltunen, senior archivist at the Michigan Tech Archives. “That includes Calumet and Hecla Mining Company, the Quincy Mining Company, and the Copper Range Company records.”

The mining company collections are far more in-depth than a researcher unfamiliar with them might imagine.

“Within those,” Hiltunen said, “there is information not just about the administrative day-to day (things) of those mines, but also any consolidations that went on. So, when they absorbed some of the smaller companies, we’ll get those original records as part of that parent collection.”

One example of company records is the Quincy Mining Company collection. In addition to the records of the Quincy company, there are also materials regarding nine other companies, including the Adventure, Evergreen Bluff, Island, Lake Superior, Pewabic, Pontiac, Ridge Mining Companies, along with E.G. Townbridge & Co.

“Within these mining company records, you might think that it just exclusively relates to certain aspects of mine work and people think of underground working in the shafts,” Hiltunen said, “But we have things that are related to other industries that are related to mining.”

The collections also include corporate, financial, medical, employment, and municipal government as well as correspondence. There are also contract books that recorded contracts under which individual men worked, the teams they comprised, and the work they were doing during the contract period, usually one month per contract. The contracts books also record precisely where the contractors worked.

There are also records pertaining to other aspects of industry.

There are smelter records, and records regarding stamp mills and milling, Hiltunen said. The collections even include housing records, which in many instances, will reveal the names and family members of the people who resided in company-owned houses.

“Also there are industrial records that relate to vendors that were selling equipment to these mines – people that were coming in to do inspections; shipping records for copper that was being shipped out of the local region downstate, or towards Ohio – going through the Great Lakes system,” Hiltunen said. “So, it’s quite a plethora – a huge range.”