Mining Company Abstracts

Collection — Box: 1-14

Identifier: MS-048

Staff Only

Collection Scope and Content Summary

Abstracts, circa 1845-circa 1929, compiled by Calumet and Hecla in support of the publication of USGS Professional Paper 144. Files contain information abstracted from a variety of sources including newspaper and magazine articles, published stockholder reports, mine superintendent reports, state and federal geological surveys, and unpublished company reports. Many files include blueprint maps of underground workings, surface buildings and property ownership. More than one hundred mines and mining companies are detailed.

Dates

Circa 1845-Circa 1929

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.