This June 2024, VAF members will venture “North of the Northwoods” to Michigan’s Keweenaw Peninsula. Known as the “Copper Country,” this three-county area on the southern shore of Lake Superior features buildings and landscapes that tell stories of copper mining boom and bust, immigration, urban growth, industrial labor, as well as post-industrial patterns of recovery, reinvention, and re-interpretation.

The region is home to the Keweenaw National Historical Park and Michigan Technological University, whose program in Industrial Heritage and Archaeology has been studying the region’s built environment for over thirty years. Historic buildings featured on the tours date from the 1850s prospecting era, through the height of industrialization when the region supported sizable cities, to the rise of tourism with the Civilian Conservation Corps and post-War automobile travel.

Issues of environmental and cultural sustainability will feature prominently as we visit Finnish-American farmstead sites, Keweenaw Bay Indian Community landscapes, post-industrial downtowns, and Superfund remediation sites.