• Sunday-What'sUP July 25 - 09:03 am

There's so much happening in the Keweenaw Peninsula these days, from Houghton to Copper Harbor, from the Parade of Nations to festivities at Fort Wilkins. But there's one thing NOT happening here in the Copper Country that was very active a hundred years ago: Mining. Life had an entirely different focus back in the early twentieth century. Sure there were tourist attractions - like Crestview and Electric Park. But visitors were more often treated to scenes related to mining, as in today's picture. Late in the summer of 1912 a group of miners all the way from Butte, Montana squared off against our Calumet boys, to see who could drive an air drill the fastest through four feet of solid granite. I bet they had Lumberjack Games somewhere up in the Peninsula that same weekend.

Life has certainly changed. The sights and sounds of the Copper Boom are just a memory now, preserved by folks like the Mineralogical Society of America and the staff at the Michigan Tech Archives, from which today's panorama was extracted. Pasty Central is proud to be a part of that heritage, with daily glimpses of life from the U.P., and helping to preserve a cherished taste of the mining era as well.

Have a good week :o)

I miss the mining days up there. Used to love the
ride between Hancock and LL when the activity was
happening.

Brother Don and I have listed 512 copper country copper mines from the past along with 597 pages of Biographies of mining owners and "captains". give me a e-mail if you are interested in finding information on long lost relatives.

Another neat picture! Cannot thank Pasty Central enough for the fantastic work you're doing in keeping us informed about the history of the U.P. through wonderful videos, pictures, historical statements, etc. Thanks, too, to the individuals sending in their unique pictures so we can all enjoy! Keep up the good work...so, so many that I know personally start their day by peeking in on Pasty Net.

The Mineralogical Society of America has an entire series of pages devoted to the Keweenaw Peninsula, not just the mining history. These pages are the Virtual Field Trip to the Keweenaw Peninsula. Not only does this give a great synopsis of the mining history, but also has information on the geology and mineralogy as well as a huge page on additional resources.

EddyFitz: I would be very interested in optaining this list you and your brother have created. My email address is in my profile. Thanks in advance....

Anaconda vs. Calumet & Hecla...wow...

do we know who won?

Capt. Paul, Thanks for the virtual field trip. I read the whole thing with great interest. We are never too old to learn something new.

When you stop and think about it, Charlie, you and the Pasty Central crew are preserving the present for the future. Can you see people a hundred years from now going to the museum to look at exhibits of old computers and looking at the Cam Notes pictures saying "Oh, look, gas was only $1.87 on Thanksgiving in 2008. I paid exactly a hundred times that today--$187 a gallon!"? Or "There's what Miner's Castle looked like before it all fell into Lake Superior." Future historians and those just interested in history will love having these "daily glimpses of life from the U.P." as much as we do now. 'Course, that isn't to say that the Pasty Cam will not be around in 2109. Anyone for "Century of the Pasty Cam on this day"?

Martha, that's a good perspective on what people will be saying 100 years from now, however, it may more likely go, "Look, that's when people drove cars with gasoline engines."