Several years ago during CCE’s informative early years we had come across the remains of an old trolley car rotting away in a field atop St. Louis Hill. For an early CC explorer it was an amazing find, and something completely unexpected and out of the ordinary. Well several years have now past and I though a second visit was in order, to see how things have changed. Unfortunately time has not been kind to the old trolley car, as both the elements and scrappers have taken their toll.

“Sacred to the memory of Isabella..
Oldest daughter of Harlow & Jane Everett…
Who departed this life Jan. 27 1861…
Aged 9 yrs and 8 mo’s…

The current condition of Agassiz Park can be contributed to two major events in the property’s history, both of which irrevocably altered the park’s character. One of these was the construction by the Calumet Housing Authority of several public housing structures along the park’s east side, a move which destroyed the park’s central gardens and forced the removal of the Agassiz statue itself. Another was the building of a municipal parking lot along the park’s western flank and the subsequent construction of a road to access that lot, a road known today as 4th Street.

Besides the collection of radial walkways which make their way across the Agassiz Park of today, there is very little else remaining that illustrates the grand vision Warren Manning had for the landscape. The majority of the old park’s property has been replaced by public housing projects, parking lots, roads and commercial buildings. But scattered about the public spaces that have managed to remain are a few glimpses of the park’s original grandeur – you just have to be willing to look hard enough (and use a little imagination).

The Agassiz Park as Warren Manning had envisioned it was a grand public space that reflected the sort of refined urbanism that had come to exemplify the metropolitan nature of Calumet and its surrounding communities. The park was a civilized landscape that countered the wild and rugged condition of the peninsula on which it resided. It both literally and metaphorically brought order to chaos, predictability to the unpredictable, and structure to the formless. Reflecting this philosophy is the park’s distinctive use of a “spoked wheel” approach in its layout, utilizing several radial tree-lined paths that spread out from Agassiz’s statue at the mine’s entrance. Fortunately these radial paths have survived the ensuing decades intact, at least relatively.

The ambitious vision that landscape architect Warren Manning put forth for C&H’s Agassiz Park was unfortunately twenty years too late in its application. If the park had been built nearer the turn of the century – with C&H nearing its zenith and the copper empire booming – that grand vision would have had an excellent chance of reaching fruition. But by the time the park had been dedicated in 1923 the great Copper Empire had started to falter, and less then a decade the Depression would wreak havoc on the region. The great era of corporate paternalism that Agassiz Park would have thrived in was over, and the park found itself instead in an era of cost cutting and belt tightening. Its future was bleak.

Alexander Agassiz was president of the great Calumet & Hecla Mine since nearly its conception, pulling the once struggling enterprise out of a financial abyss and building it into a massively successful company of impressive wealth and power. Agassiz’s influence reached beyond the company itself and extended to the surrounding communities and towns as well, thanks to the man’s paternalistic nature. As a result both the mine and community suffered a great loss with Agassiz’s passing in 1910. . In honor of that legacy, Agassiz’s son commissioned famed landscape architect Warren Manning to convert a large piece of vacant land adjacent to the mine into a grand community park in his fathers honor. The year was 1920.