Over the past 20 years I so much enjoyed researching our "Shoebox Memories" presented on Sundays. When we first started the Pasty Cam, there was very little content about the Copper Country on the Internet. But through the years, information about every subject under the sun has been expanded and explored, and that includes Upper Michigan and its distinct historical regions. Today we re-visit the old train building-turned service station (2004), train station that became a restaurant - and later medical offices (2007), and the old mining-stone boat (2012). (Thanks to Bob Gilreath, Jon Hopper, and the MTU Archives.) More recent historical exploration was in video form, a documentary that aired on PBS in 2016, with the trailer above (thanks to Michael Loukinen).

Welcome back to all the returning snowbirds, who spend the most pleasant months in the U.P. from about mid-May to mid-October. With the snow finally gone, we look forward to a great season ahead!

Have a good week :o)

Seeing the stone boat, My uncle Chuck Kopp called
it the boat that don't float. Played on it many
times.

There are suppose to be three (3) of those stone boats, I have a picture of two (2) of them.

It's inevitable...out with the old, in with the oldest.

Hard to that of a boy of 12 working 10-12 hours in
the mines. You grew up quick back then!

Found this about the stone boats:

These model ships are made from a calico
collection of stones including a scattering of
sandstone and mine rock. Shaped to resemble small
warships, the stone boats come complete with
several cannons and even a faux machine gun
emplacement. A total of three were built: one sits
along US41 at Kearsarge and is currently the home
to a Veteran’s Memorial; another was built a dozen
miles south at Franklin but has largely succumbed
to the passage of time; and a third anchors an old
school yard in Centennial Heights.

The Copper Country Range. I'm so glad the train station still exists. What a hard working yet romantic era, 100 to 140 years ago. I wish someone would make an appropriate movie set in that Copper Country era, ala "Somewhere in Time".

jbuck, I always remember the factoid I learned about the miner's day before the advent of mechanized lifts. Their "pay day" would not start until they were done climbing down the ladders and pay would cease during their daily climb out.

Excellent documentary of the mining, etc back in
the day - THANK YOU for sharing the vid!