The Houghton County Sanatorium was approved in 1910 following a countywide vote to aid in the region’s treatment of Tuberculosis patients. Established on a plot of civic land near Houghton Canal Road, the “wood-frame building…featured a large screen porch” and initially was “intended to house just twelve people at first, but the large local TB population quickly overwhelmed” the facility. By 1915 the sanatorium’s capacity was increased to house thirty-six patients and just two decades later a secondary expansion was added with the removal of the screen porch to accommodate another twenty-nine beds. The 1940s saw WPA grant money brought in for upgrades and the renaming of the facility to the Copper Country Sanatorium. However, “just a few years after…a state inspection found the tuberculosis hospital to be ‘an obvious fire trap’ and unfit for continued use. Construction began soon after on a modern brick building in Hancock, not from what was then St. Joseph’s Hospital.” In 1949 the sanatorium was acquired by the state and leased back to the county. Opening in 1950, the sanatorium continued to treat TB patients until the early 1960s as cases had declined to the point where the facilities were returned to the county and repositioned as a general medical facility.

Historical note contains exerpts and edited information from Emily Riippa's blog post "A Visit to the Copper Country Sanatorium: Images from the Brenda Papke Photograph Collection." https://blogs.mtu.edu/archives/2017/10/20/a-visit-to-the-copper-country-sanatorium-images-from-the-brenda-papke-photograph-collection/, October 20, 2017.

Arne Bernhard Kananen was born on March 25, 1910 to Oscar and Tyyne Kananen of Toivola, Michigan. The eldest of five children, Arne was employed as a farmer prior to entering the Houghton County Sanatorium for Tuburculosis. He died as a result of TB at home on September 15, 1933 at the age of 23 and was buried in the Toivola Cemetery in Stanton Township, Houghton County.