Calumet and Hecla Mining Companies Photograph Collection

Collection — Box: 1-33

Identifier: MS-003

Staff Only

Collection Scope and Content Summary

Photograph collection, 1892-1967, of the Calumet and Hecla Mining Company. Images document all aspects of mining company activity: rocks, drilling and blasting, timbering, tramming, rockhouses, milling, smelting, electrolytic, dredge, leaching, docks and shipping, engines and compressors, pumps, surface shops, and power plants. Also includes photographs from more than twenty Calumet and Hecla companies, including the mines (Calumet and Hecla, Ahmeek, Allouez, Centennial, Isle Royale, Kingston, LaSalle, Osceola, Superior, Tamarack) other ancillary companies (Lake Milling, Smelting and Refining Co., Mutual Water, Light and Power Co., Goodman Lumber) operated by the company in Michigan, Wisconsin, Colorado and New Mexico. There are also a variety of community photographs documenting social activities of the company in the Calumet, Michigan region.

Dates

1892-1967

Access

Available for use in the Michigan Technological University Archives and Copper Country Historical Collections.

Biography

The Calumet and Hecla Consolidated Copper Company was the most successful corporation to have mined native copper in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Through nearly a century of mining activity, the company produced in excess of 4.5 billion pounds of refined copper and issued over $200 million in shareholder dividends. Unlike many of its competitors along the Keweenaw Peninsula, Calumet and Hecla successfully expanded its operations over several separate mineral bodies, developed capital-intensive ancillary industrial facilities, explored diversified non-mining enterprises, and remained a significant mining corporation at the national and international level well past the district’s most productive era.