Travel Tip Thursday: The Keneenaw Peninsula

Travel Tip Thursday is a writing prompt by Pseudonymous High School Teacher. Those participating are encouraged to write about a special place to travel. This is my entry for this week… I found a new favorite place this past Sunday, a place that seems to have it all. Surrounded by water, this land has more lighthouses than my home state of North Carolina (10 to NC’s 6). There’s a rough coastline akin to Northern California and like my home state, there are plenty of shipwrecks. There are plenty of trees and, like some of my favorite areas out West, the place is steeped in mining history. And its right here in Michigan (although to get there from the southern part of the Lower Peninsula will take you all day). I’m speaking of the Keweenaw Peninsula.

This past weekend, as I was in transition from a meeting in Minneapolis to catching up with folks for a Habitat project in the Upper Peninsula, I had Sunday to spend exploring the peninsula. I’d only been to this area once before, back in 2004, and then I only went to Houghton, a town in the southern part of the peninsula, where I caught the ferry to Isle Royale (one of these days I will have to write up the story of my eight days hiking there).

This area is known for lots of snow (wet snow)

The Keweenaw Peninsula is copper country and the metal has been mined here for thousands of years. What makes Keweenaw copper unique is its purity. It’s almost 100% pure copper which makes it easy to work. Native Americans began copper production here long before Columbus and even the Vikings arrival in the new world. In the 1840s the copper production was taken over by the Europeans and the area began a copper boom that lasted for over a hundred years and produced billions of pounds of the metal.



I began my trip with a stop at the Keleva Café, waiting out a thunderstorm. The establishment was originally a saloon that took its name from Kalevak, a Finnish epic poem. After coffee and partly clearing skies, I drove the fifty miles through the heart of the peninsula, taking US 41 to Copper Harbor, enjoying the scenery of the birch forest. I would love to take this drive early in the fall, when the trees are turning. Copper Harbor is the northern-most town in the Upper Peninsula and is perched on a rock ledge that juts far out into Lake Superior. Exposed to winds and with a lake that is so deep that it never freezes, the town is one of the snowiest places on earth. I came back down the peninsula taking MI 26, a road that runs along the shoreline.


I stopped in Eagle Harbor, touring the lighthouse and museums there. In former days, there was also a lifesaving station in Eagle Harbor in which the forerunner of our modern Coast Guard would brave the weather in attempts to save those in peril upon the lake. I also walked around Eagle River, a town that is the county seat with a beautiful courthouse. Both of these towns had harbors that were used for shipping ore and as a base for a fishing industry. Today, many of the harbors are used by pleasure boats.

My next stop was the city of Calamet. There are many beautiful buildings in this city and it also serves as the headquarters for the Keweenaw National Historic Park. Steeples dot the downtown. In their day, there were a large number of churches, divided not only by denomination (many are Catholic), but also language. There were many different ethnic groups here, each speaking their own language. Mining continued in the Calamet area till 1968, when during a strike, the company shut down operations.



The long abandoned train station in Calumet. Notice the spires for one of the Catholic Churches in the background.

The library in Calumet

My final stop was at the Quincy Mine which overlooks the towns of Houghton and Hancock. The Quincy was another jackpot, producing over a billion pounds of copper. The Quincy Mine shaft, which stills stands, was built in 1907-8 and eventually descended 9360 feet below surface. Deep mining was abandoned in 1931, but other parts of the Quincy Mine continue to produce until just after the end of the Second World War. The towns of Houghton (named for Michigan’s first state geologist) and Hancock sit on opposite sides of the Keweenaw Waterway. For thousands of years, Native Americans would portage over the land here, using the large lake in the center to allow them to cross the peninsula without having to travel around it. In 1859, work began on connecting two rivers to this lake, allowing ships to avoid the more treacherous waters around the tip of the peninsula. However, few ships travel the canal these days and the waterway is mostly used by pleasure boats.

One last view of the shoreline.