Central Mine Historic District

The Central Mine Historic District in Keweenaw County preserves the remains of one of the most productive copper mines in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. The Central Mine operated from eighteen fifty-four to eighteen ninety-eight, producing over fifty million pounds of refined copper. At its peak in the eighteen seventies, more than twelve hundred people lived in the company town built around the mine, a community drawn largely from Cornwall in England, whose miners were among the most skilled hard-rock workers in the world.

When the mine closed in eighteen ninety-eight, residents gradually drifted away over the following decades, and the last permanent resident left in nineteen fifty-two. The remaining stone engine houses, shaft rock houses, and mine workers' dwellings are listed on the National Register of Historic Places, one of the best-preserved examples of a copper-era company town in the United States.