This project has been a major three-year endeavor for a team of researchers in the Michigan Tech Archives, the Geospatial Research Facility, and the Department of Social Sciences. Project leads Sarah F. Scarlett (Social Sciences), Don Lafreniere (Social Sciences and Geospatial Research Facility), and Lindsay Hiltunen (University Archivist) received a grant for $240,012 in January 2020 from the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR), a DC-based non-profit whose “Digitizing Hidden Collections” program is made possible with funding from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

We brought together a collaborative team across University units with several interrelated and ambitious goals:

1. To scan, digitize, and make publicly accessible one of the Michigan Tech Archives’ most referenced collections: a group of 38,951 employee cards kept by the Calumet & Hecla Mining Company;
2. To transcribe the cards to create a historical dataset of names and details about the lives, families, and work histories of people who came from all over the world to work at C&H;
3. To integrate that data set into the backend of the Keweenaw Time Traveler so that each employee could be mapped to their home, and connected with other records including the US census, city directories, and school records already available.  

After three years, a one-year no-cost extension, countless hours of patient scanning, painstaking transcription, geocoding, record linking, debate about user interface design — all during a global pandemic! — this team is very pleased to announce the successful completion of the Michigan Miners at Home and Work Project! 

Over the next weeks and months, more Project News stories will appear with in-depth reflections from some of the over 25 student workers who were the heart of this project. Each of these students learned to read cursive (something new to many of them!) and dedicated themselves to deciphering and making sense of the abbreviations used by C&H clerks. They got together on Zoom to share their experiences and lend mutual support during the isolation caused by COVID-19 during 2020 and 2021. Thanks to all of them!  

​Helping others engage with local history is one of the main goals of the Keweenaw Time Traveler! This winter, we are working with many local businesses around the Copper Country to bring local history to the businesses we use every day. Over the coming months, we will be installing window stickers which link to stories you’ve shared about these businesses.

​Please join us in congratulating Timothy Stone on his completion of a Master’s Degree in Industrial Heritage and Archaeology. His thesis looked at how children’s environmental exposures are studied and included the development of an index to compare student exposures in 1920 Calumet and Laurium. His project incorporated local school records into the Keweenaw Time Traveler, which are now available to the public through the Explore application.

​You can read his thesis here: https://digitalcommons.mtu.edu/etdr/1482/.

​Have you ever received a postcard from some exotic place? Maybe a friend was vacationing in France, or a family member in Hawaii? Or maybe Calumet?

Several Historical Environments Spatial Analytics Lab faculty, staff, and students presented their work at the Social Science History Association meeting in Chicago this week.

​Dr. Don Lafreniere (Project Director) began the conference as a roundtable participant with other scholars from the U.S. and U.K. discussing models for building and sustaining Historical GIS projects. He also shared the next stages of the Keweenaw Time Traveler project, highlighting our recently released mobile app. He demonstrated this by importing a map segment of Chicago that allowed participants to see the historic Palmer House (where the conference was held) just as we can see towns around the Copper Country!

The Keweenaw Time Traveler team is partnering with the Chassell Heritage Center to help build interactive digital interpretation for the new Chassell historic interpretive trail. The trail will run from Chassell Township Park along Pike Bay and through the former site of a lumber mill. Using maps and aerial imagery The Time Traveler will give people unique insight into how the site changed from 1893 to the present day as they travel down the new boardwalk trail. Through story points created by the Chassell Heritage Center team guests to the park will also be informed about the unique value this site has to the history of the Copper Country.  You can learn more about this amazing project by visiting the Chassell Heritage Center on Facebook, or through this excellent 'Discovering' Episode from 906 Outdoors found below. Be sure to check out this great trail and be sure to bring keweenawhistory.com along!