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.

While C&H continued to maintain the property for the next thirty years, very few of the parks planed amenities were ever erected. By 1950 the mine had begun to sell off portions of the park to private developers and had even leased a large section on its north end to the public school system for use as the school’s football field. With C&H’s closure in the ’60s the park was abandoned and left to revert back to the vacant lot from which it sprung . In 1990 the old park – or at least what was left of it – was finally turned over to the village of Calumet. Today only a small portion of the old park remains, the rest having been developed and populated with new construction. But if you look close enough, you can still find a few remnants of the old park’s charm still scattered about the property. You just need to know where to look.

When looking down on the old park from above, you can still make out a good deal of its original features. In addition to the property’s distinctive triangle shaped outline, you can also easily see more then a few of the old tree-lined pathways that once dominated the parks landscape. But today only a small portion of the old park’s sprawling parkland continues to serve as public space today (the area outlined in green in the photo above). The rest of the old park has since been carved up into commercial and residential spaces including a supermarket, insurance agency and a collection of public / senior housing structures. Accessing these new structures is a new road – aptly named Park Ave – that cuts its way through the center of the old park and further decimates its original layout.

If the park was still intact today, it would have looked something like the layout seen above. A series of radial paths would have made their way from the Agassiz statue location out towards Calumet’s main cross streets. A playground would have sat in the upper left corner, while a football would make up the north end and tennis courts would have sat along the western end. At the bottom would have sat the proposed amphitheater. Of course none of this exists today, at least not in its original form. But a closer investigation of the old property on foot does reveal some clues to its former life.

At the center of it all was the Agassiz statue, built in honor of Mr. Agassiz himself. Unfortunately the Agassiz statue no longer remains in Agassiz Park It now resides down the street in front of the old C&H library, moved there in the 70’s to make room for a collection of public housing units erected in the old park by the Calumet Housing Authority. It was a move that almost didn’t happen, and the statue was almost lost because of it. Apparently after C&H’s closure, the Agassiz estate had willed the statue to Harvard University, under the idea that the statue wouldn’t be left to rot in an abandoned mining town. But Harvard was unwilling to pay for its transportation and declined to take it. In turn the housing authority was also unwilling to pay for its removal either, and destroying the statue was looking to be the cheapest and easiest option. Fortunately a group of concerned citizens banded together to raise the necessary funds and was successful in moving the statue to its current home at the old library.

Today that spot where the Agassiz statue once sat is now home to a parking lot and the old path that once lead up to the statue’s base stops prematurely at the road’s edge. From here park patrons could have continued on to the mine itself through a path that continued on behind the statue and made its way towards the C&H Dry House.

Today that path still exists, though not nearly in such a prestigious form. Today it consists of a concrete path lined by chain-link fence and guarded by several concrete barricades. The path connects Park Ave to the CLK school playground and currently serves as a walking path students living in the nearby public housing units.

Looking southward from the old mine entrance we can see a distinct line of cedars making their way along what looks like an old railroad grade. This is probably one of Agassiz Park’s old boundary paths which made their way along the park’s perimeter. Sitting to the right of this pathway would have been the park’s picnic areas along with a covered shelter.

Instead of a picnic area, however, we now have this rather ugly brick building. This is part of the public housing development now taking up a great deal of the old park’s eastern flank.

Turning northward we find even more buildings from that public housing development. From here Park Ave continues only a few more hundred feet before ending at a cul-de-sac. From this angle it would seem as if there was never a grand public space here at all. It isn’t until you turn westward towards downtown that the remnants of the old park’s grand plan come into view and you can finally get a sense of what was once here.

To Be Continued…