Central

In 1854 a mine was opened on a fissure deposit of copper atop a craggy bluff overlooking the East Branch of the Eagle River. Like most mines begun along the Keweenaw it was a great gamble, and one that quickly paid off. In the first forty feet of depth the mine recovered over 40 tons of pure mass copper, and became the only mine ever in the Copper Country to make a profit its first year. Quickly the word spread and the workers arrived. Just as quickly the town of Central was born.

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.

Central, like all other mining towns along the Keweenaw, were populated by peoples from all across Europe and Great Britain. A substantial part of Central’s inhabitants were Irish and German, and the highest percentage were Cornish. Mining was in the Cornish blood, as they had been mining in Cornwall for generations before coming to the Copper Country. Mine companies knew this, and paid special mind to recruit as many Cornish as they could. These were the cream of the crop, and were treated perhaps a little better then most other immigrants. Status, pay, and housing all reflected this.

If you follow one of the trails near the visitors center, you find yourself hiking up the steep bluff above the town to a simple sign in the woods. Although there isn’t much left to show for it, here once stood the old Central School. Like all mine locations, skilled miners brought their wives and children along into the wilderness. Schools like this one were constructed at mine sites to help prepare these children for the world. In the Copper Country, however, these schools were more of a tool in Americanizing the immigrant children and preparing them for work in the mine themselves.

The high ridges that make up the Keweenaw’s rocky spine were born from volcanic activity millions of years ago. They consist of stacked layers of basalt (cooled lava) – known collectively as the Greenstone Flow. The Greenstone Flow was resistant to the glaciers that rumbled over it, while the surrounding sandstones and shale were not. The result was an impressive line of sheer cliff faces stretching from Cliff to the West Bluff just east of Copper Harbor. The Greenstone Flow also happened to be home to a large amount of native copper – attracting a collection of prospectors to those sheer cliffs as well.

The vast majority of housing established across the peninsula was built by mine companies for the housing of their workforce, a necessary expense considering the remoteness of the region. Companies would keep costs as low as they could, utilizing very simple and open layouts. For the Central Mine this meant the construction of row upon row of Saltboxes. These houses were two stories but featured a long sloping roof on the back side, resembling the wall-hung containers used to store salt. Later these designs were phased out in favor of the more classical mine house design we’re used to today (See an example of this more standard design from Central HERE)