For many decades Central simply sat and decayed. Building after building was abandoned, and year after year the heavy snows did their work brining them down. Besides a few summertime residents, the town of over a thousand became a town of under a dozen. It had become a ghost town, soon to share the same fate as Mandan, Deleware, and Copper Falls. The first time I visited the site soon after coming to the area for college the town was on the verge of disappearing. But soon after that visit the area was given new life when the Keweenaw Historical Society obtained 38 acres of the town in 1996. Buildings were rehabilitated, ruins were marked, and interpretive trails were established. Central was saved.

Central sits along US41 north of the Eagle Harbor Cutoff road and across from the road to Gratiot Lake. A large wooden sign marks the main road leading to it – Central Road – and if you turn up that road you soon come across the newly rehabilitated visitor center. (See the Big Picture) This small yellow building has been painstaking restored on the outside. On the inside a small interpretive center offers a good overview of the town and the mine that gave it life. A sprinkling of artifacts and a large wall mural of the site as it once was take center stage, with a collection of old photos, maps, and before/after photos to round it off.

Across the street and slightly down the hill sits an old miner’s house, typical to what was built at center. This has also been restored and you can take a self-guided tour inside. The building has been left as close to its original state as possible, and room have been decorated much the same way as they would have been when miner’s once lived here. Outside both the visitors center and miner’s house are shady and quiet picnic areas complete with picnic tables. A series of hiking trails spread out from here and snake out into the woods and ruins beyond. All in all a great place to stop and enjoy the peaceful setting.

Also typical for mine houses was the addition of a rear “porch” such as this one. Originally a mine house had 4 rooms, two bedrooms, a small living space and a kitchen. With these rear additions the occupants could gain two more rooms, often used as a kitchen and pantry. The old kitchen was then concerted over to more living space such as a dining room.

Here’s what the layout of the miner’s house looks like. Keep in mind this is very ruff and not to scale at all, but gives you a general sense of how things were laid out. You can see the additional two rooms provided by the addition. You can walk through most of this house, with some of the rooms behind glass.

The dining room in the miner’s house. The main source of heat for the house was this stove, which fed heat to the second floor through a large vent in the ceiling directly above here.

Another thing the miner’s house didn’t have was a bathroom. It was provided, of course, in the form of an outhouse. This is not original to the house, but was instead donated from some place else. But the design was probably similar.

Inside the visitors center stands the original chimney. When rehabilitating the building, they were unsure of how the interior of this building was laid out originally. So they simply gutted it out into one large room to use as a small museum, in the center of which stands this.

What’s impressive about these old houses is just how old they are. If this building is an original from when the mine first started, that makes it over 150 years old! While not too impressive from the front, looking at the visitors center from the rear gives a much more interesting perspective.

to be continued…