The Cliff Mine Site Project
Join Michigan Tech industrial archaeologists in documenting a historic copper mine in the heart of Michigan’s Keweenaw Peninsula. The Keweenaw is famous for its abundant formations of native copper, ranging in size from pebbles to record-breaking boulders of pure metal. Our ongoing project investigates the ruins of the Cliff Mine, the region's first profitable copper mine, and its townsite of Clifton (established 1845, peaked c.1870, and abandoned in the early 20th century).
The “Cliff Vein” produced over 38 million pounds of refined copper over a 40-year period, paying dividends to its investors totaling $2.5 million. People working in the mine and living in the town transformed the social and technological practices of mining, adapting to the mass copper running through the region’s rich veins and starting America’s first successful industrial mining boom. The Cliff site is situated along the 200-foot greenstone bluff that runs up the spine of the Keweenaw Peninsula, about 30 miles northeast of Tech’s hometown of Houghton.
[ Learn More About the History of the Cliff Mine ]
The Field School Experience
Learning archaeological fieldwork is an immersive experience where teamwork is essential. It takes weeks of work before a person can begin assembling the clues from each discovery into meaningful pictures of the past. As a result, students should expect the work to be exacting, often slow, and physically challenging, as one develops professional skills over time. We work eight-hour days in all conditions, five days a week (Wednesday through Sunday) throughout the six-week summer course. All that time is essential to the process of learning tools and techniques, as well as piecing together the clues of Cliff and Clifton. Students should expect to do the actual fieldwork instead of watching other people work and tell you what it all means. Every day, each person adds an important piece to this large, multiyear, interdisciplinary jigsaw puzzle that is rediscovering Cliff and its community.
Prior to the start of fieldwork, students can anticipate field trips. The trips are coordinated with each summer’s excavation topic (and the weather) and usually include local mining sites, the Copper Country Archives and Historical Collections, partner sites in the Keweenaw National Historical Park, Keweenaw County Historical Society museums and sites, and perhaps a curator's introduction to the collection at the A. E. Seaman Mineral Museum. In addition to field trips, students will experience lectures and discussions devoted to the history and technology of early copper mining in the Keweenaw and the communities and landscapes it produced. Guest lectures are given by published historians, anthropologists, environmental scientists, and many other experts.
Participants in the Cliff Mine project become public archaeologists. Students regularly interact with site visitors, providing tours of the Cliff Mine and Clifton and discussing the region’s copper-mining history. Students therefore have many opportunities to develop their skills as facilitators, educators, docents, and speakers as they represent their own fieldwork findings to site guests, which instructors facilitate with discussions about best practices and ethical concerns.
[ Read More on the Project Blog ]
Course Details
Students will live in Houghton, Michigan. Michigan Tech will help guest students to find private accommodations in town for the duration of the field school. Project participants are encouraged to explore the Keweenaw’s ecological and cultural heritage during their time off, and many choose to bring outdoor recreation gear for mountain biking, rock climbing, hiking, backpacking, road biking, and the many water sport opportunities provided by Lake Superior and our national and state parks and forests.