 We are now one launch event and two festivals into the Keweenaw Time Traveler summer season. Thank you everyone for your support!
Continuing our #MapYourHistory mission, we bring you a story from our Explore App. To see the post in its entirety and to contribute your own stories, start the Time Traveler here on our website. Choose the Explore App to search stories for "Cliff Mine." Note: You can contribute a story *anywhere* in the Keweenaw, even if you do not see a Sanborn map at that location.
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Despite the rain, we had a great time at Pasty Fest. People of all ages stopped by to use the Keweenaw Time Traveler. One of our team members, Michael, even took part in the pasty eating contest!
Thank you to everyone who visited our booth and we look forward to seeing you at future events.  Join us this Saturday (6/24) at Pasty Fest! You can find our tent on the corner of 5th and Oak in Calumet, MI. We will also be at the Portland St. Performance Spot from 3-4pm. Come to learn more about our project and to #MapYourHistory.
***New for this event: Our tent will have a scanner. Feel free to bring photos, recipes, letters, etc. from your personal history with pasties. We would be happy to scan them and help you add what you wish to the Explore app. The Keweenaw Time Traveler attends its first summer festival.
The Keweenaw Time Traveler team had a great weekend interacting with BridgeFest visitors. Ray Kestner Waterfront Park, the location of the festival, is the former site of the Copper Range Railroad Co. Collaborating with visitors, we found our tent location (the 'X') on Sanborn Fire Insurance Plans from various years (1949 is shown above). As we learned, the present road takes its shape from the original roundhouse.
Want to learn more about Keweenaw history? Start the Time Traveler!  You can now use the Keweenaw Time Traveler! After a successful launch party last night at the Carnegie Museum in downtown Houghton, the Keweenaw Time Traveler is up and running. How do you want to Time Travel today? Check out our four apps here. The Explore App lets you browse old maps and search for people by name and address. This "Public Test Version" of the Explore App is still growing and will continue to improve. Right now you will find the most data in Hancock, but we will be adding more information over the summer for all the Copper Country towns. Keep track of what we're adding on this status page. You can also add your own stories! Another way to Time Travel is to choose one of the Citizen Historian Apps. These ask you to record data from historic maps that computers can't read so that users like you have more information to explore in the Keweenaw Time Traveler. You can Document Building Materials, Document Building Use, or Transcribe the Map. If we all work together, we can make the Time Traveler even more fun! Thanks to everyone who came out last night to help launch the Keweenaw Time Traveler. We hope you enjoy using it and we can't wait to see what you'll do with it. Get started here.  Tonight's the night! We launch at the Carnegie Museum in Houghton, MI. Come join us at 6:30pm to hear how you can use the Keweenaw Time Traveler to investigate your favorite buildings. Get ready to #MapYourHistory! For some site history: The Carnegie Museum's gets its name from the Gilded Age philanthropist Andrew Carnegie, who gave Houghton (and hundreds of other communities) funds to build a public library in 1909. But before the current stone and brick building, a large wooden structure occupied the site and had lots of different uses. It was a skating rink occupied by the Michigan Mining School (Michigan Tech’s predecessor) in 1888. Then it became an Opera House complete with “stage and scenery” and grocery storage in the basement.
We travel to Calumet, MI for today's #MapYourHistory story. "The C&H Drill Shop was built in 1885 from discarded, low-copper-content basalt known as “poor rock,” as a place for sharpening and repairing mining drills. Vacated in 1968, the Copper Country Curling Club inherited the use of this cold, rough building in 2005. Today, the Club is proud to host what is surely the most environmentally-friendly regulation ice in the United States! There is no mechanical cooling required, thanks to the amazing thermal mass of the thick rock walls that buffers against even several days of midwinter thaw. This clever reuse leverages the robust and raw construction of this historic industrial building to wonderful advantage, and works to keep another beautiful piece of the area’s rich industrial heritage intact and in use!"
--John Arnold, [email protected] Read more about the Keweenaw Time Traveler's Launch Party on June 15 at the Michigan Tech news site. Please join us!  "Frigid Fairy Tales" and Keweenaw air travel combine in this #MapYourHistory story.
In 1973, Michigan Tech had a unique arrangement with a university in Texas. The Daily Mining Gazette covered the story and captioned the photo (left) as follows:
“A shipment of 500 pounds of official Copper Country snow is sent [via the Houghton County Memorial Airport] to the students of Southwest Texas State University in San Marcos as part of the Michigan Tech Winter Carnival. The southerners look forward to its arrival each year for an all-out snowball fight in the Texas sun.” Soon, Michigan Tech students past and present will be able to share their air travel memories though the #KeweenawTimeTraveler. Not a Tech student or alum? No problem! Anyone can join in and #MapYourHistory. NOTE: For more historic photos like this one, you can visit Copper Country Historical Images In this #MapYourHistory story, we feature a lucky discovery made by one of our team.
"While working as a Keweenaw Time Traveler mapping people to their houses in the year 1917, I came across a man named William Hodgson who had no address listed in the city directory. Wanting to find his house, I looked him up the 1920 United States Census. I found a man named William A Hodgson who lived in Houghton in 1920. I wasn’t sure if this was the same person, but I decided to look for his house on the map anyway. When I checked the map, I found a house at the address listed on the census, and right next to it was 'Hodgson Wm' written in pencil! It just goes to show how much information can be found on these maps."
--Rose Hildebrandt |
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