Keweenaw National Historical Park
| Keweenaw National Historical Park | |
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IUCN category V (protected landscape/seascape)
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| Location | Upper Peninsula, Michigan, United States |
| Nearest city | Calumet, Michigan |
| Coordinates | 47°09′23″N 88°33′49″W / 47.15639°N 88.56361°WCoordinates: 47°09′23″N 88°33′49″W / 47.15639°N 88.56361°W |
| Area | 1,869 acres (7.56 km2) |
| Established | October 27, 1992 |
| Visitors | Not available (in 2005) |
| Governing body | National Park Service in cooperation with other private and non-profit organizations. |
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Keweenaw National Historical Park
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Park Headquarters
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| Location | P.O. 471, Calumet, Michigan |
| NRHP Reference # | 01000108 |
| Added to NRHP | October 27, 1992 |
Keweenaw National Historical Park
Keweenaw National Historical Park is a unit of the U.S. National Park Service. Established in 1992, the park celebrates the life and history of the Keweenaw Peninsula in the Upper Peninsula of the U.S. state of Michigan. As of 2009, it is a partly privatized park made up of two primary units, the Calumet Unit and the Quincy Unit, and 21 cooperating "Heritage Sites" located on federal, state, and privately owned land in and around the Keweenaw Peninsula. The National Park Service owns approximately 1,700 acres (690 ha) in the Calumet and Quincy Units. Units are located in Baraga, Houghton, Keweenaw, and Ontonagon counties.
The Congressional legislation establishing the Park stated, among other things, that:
(1)The oldest and largest lava flow known on Earth is located on the Keweenaw Peninsula of Michigan. This volcanic activity produced the only place on Earth where large scale economically recoverable 97 percent pure native copper is found.
(2) The Keweenaw Peninsula is the only site in the country where prehistoric aboriginal mining of copper occurred. Artifacts made from this copper by these ancient Indians were traded as far south as present day Alabama.
The Keweenaw Peninsula is the site of the most extensive known deposits of native copper in the world. Occurring here in relatively pure form, the red metal could be broken out of the rock and worked to make a wide variety of products, from jewelry and tools by its earliest miners to coins and electric wire by its final generations. Keweenaw copper was mined for approximately 7,000 years, from 5000 BCE until 1968. During the period for which records were kept, 1840–1968, more than 11 billion pounds (5 million metric tons) of copper were mined here. During the peak production years of World War I, 1916–1917, the annual copper yield reached a maximum of 270 million pounds (125,000 t).
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Wikipedia