In many ways, the Lake Superior copper district paralleled most of the rest of the country in the decades after the Civil War. There were also differences. On the national scene, at the beginning of the war, the United States was largely a society based on agriculture. As Bruce Catton wrote in his book The Civil War, “Most of them lived on farms or in very small towns, they lived better than their fathers had lived, and they knew that their children would do still better.” In the Lake Superior copper district, the number of small farms could be counted on one hand. However, during the frontier period of the copper region, everybody lived in what Catton described as “very small towns.” In fact, the housing clustered around mines could not be classified as towns. By definition, a town is an urban area that has a name, defined boundaries and a local government.

The copper region differed from most of the rest of the country in still another way: the region was opened to mining and development by the federal government in March 1843 for the purpose of mining copper. The copper produced by the Cliff Mine, starting in 1846, the National Mine, in 1849, the Minesota Mine, in 1850, majorly contributed to the emerging industrialization of the U.S.

By the end of the Civil War, those fissure vein mass copper mines were about played out and all three were closed by 1870. But if the U.S. was largely farms and very small towns prior to and during the Civil War, it was largely due to the Industrial Revolution that by 1880, the landscape, along with society, of the U.S. had already undergone a rapid transformation that brought the U.S. into what Mark Twain referred to as the Gilded Age.

As the University of Houston’s Digital History points out, by 1900, the nation had become an urban society dominated by industrial corporations.

“Many far-reaching economic and social changes transformed American society in the 20th century,” states Digital History, “including innovations in science and technology, economic productivity, mass communication and mass entertainment, health and living standards, the role of government, gender roles, and conceptions of freedom.”

In this, the Lake Superior copper district was in-line with the rest of the country.

While the copper region was still largely undeveloped during the Civil War, it did not rely on local agriculture for its economy. The region was developed to become a mining region, and in so doing, by 1900, had become an urban society dominated by, not industrial corporations, but rather, one industry. In spite of that, the copper region experienced the Gilded Age, along with the rest of the country.

Digital History defines the age as: The 1880s and 1890s were years of unprecedented technological innovation, mass immigration and intense political partisanship, including disputes over currency, tariffs, political corruption and patronage, and railroads and business trusts.

The copper region also shared the experience of what historians call the Progressive Era, which came in response to U.S. industrialism and the corruption of the Gilded Age. Outlined by the Khan Academy, “Though industrialization in the United States raised standards of living for many, it had a dark side. Corporate bosses, sometimes referred to as ‘robber barons,’ pursued unethical and unfair business practices aimed at eliminating competition and increasing profits. Factory workers, many of them recent immigrants, were frequently subjected to brutal and perilous working and living conditions. Political corruption enriched politicians at the expense of the lower and working classes, who struggled to make ends meet. The gap between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have-nots’ was widening.”

The labor strike that rocked the copper region in 1913 occurred during the Progressive era, and was crushed by “corporate bosses.” In many ways, they won the battle but lost the war. Many of the strikers simply left the mines, left the region for other industries, and found safer jobs at higher wages. It was with great reluctance that the mining companies finally came to understand that if they were going to attract and retain workers, they were going to have to transfer some of the money for dividends to investing in improving their rental properties to compete with the increases in the standard of living enjoyed by Americans in other industrial regions. At a time when the mining companies were facing the challenges of copper market competition from western mines, they also faced stiff competition of workers.

It was under these pressures that Lake Superior companies decided they needed to improve the quality of their houses for their renters, like putting stone foundations with cellars under them, supplying them with water lines and faucets, electrical connections, and so on. In that regard, the Copper Country was more than a decade ahead of the rest of the country.

The Houghton County Electric Light Company was managed by Stone & Webster’s Electric railway, electric lighting, gas, and water power properties. In 1909, it was listed as the sole company providing electric lighting service to Houghton and Keweenaw counties, including Houghton, Hancock, Laurium, Red Jacket, Lake Linden, Hubbell, South Range, as well as the mining locations of Atlantic, Isle Royale, Osceola, Wolverine, Allouez, Ahmeek, Mohawk and Dollar Bay. For as distant as the Copper Country was from other urban and industrial centers, the region was amazingly citified.

While certainly not the first urban center in Michigan to obtain a street car system, the Houghton County Traction Company started a streetcar line in Houghton in 1900. Within a decade, the line extended north to Mohawk, with branches to Lake Linden, Hubbell and Wolverine.

The second decade of the 20th century found the Lake Superior Copper Mining District in a state of scientific and technological evolution. Fortunately, there is an abundance of historical documentation that allows us to obtain a thorough understanding of people, culture, life and work in the Copper Country as the region progressed from a wilderness just open to settlement, to a frontier, to a world-class mining district with an industrial complex that impressed anyone who visited the area.

Of course, it left a long-lasting impression on those who came to the area and saw it. To the local residents who grew up in the area, the whole region was just a day-to-day thing. Some “outsiders,” when they left the region, were perplexed at some of the conditions they had encountered, among them were government officials.

In conducting its investigation into conditions of and reasons for the mine labor strike of 1913, housing was studied for a report of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, presented to the federal legislature by the Commissioner of Labor Statistics, Royal Meeker. The investigation was led by Walter Palmer. One of the matters investigated was mine employees constructing their own homes on property leased from the mining companies. Studying the structures and terms of the leases, the bewildered author of the report commented:

“It is unnecessary to comment on the drastic nature of the terms of these five-year ground-rent leases, but it seems strange that any person would build a house on land leased on such conditions, and it is most astonishing that 1,000 houses have been built on land so leased from the Calumet & Hecla Mining Co., as estimated by the company, and 153 at subsidiary companies –“

For many who did build homes on company-owned land, it was undoubtedly an attempt at some pretense (an attempt to make something that is not the case appear true) at establishing at least some independence from the company. To many workers from eastern and southern Europe, the companies with their paternalism felt a bit too much like the 10th century feudal manorial systems under which they lived in the Old Country.

While the Bureau was confused at the house on least ground topic, the report included a study on other houses that truly did capture a region in a state of evolution.

“In addition to the frame houses that are owned by the mining companies and rented to their employees,” the report states, “there are at a number mines log cabins containing from 20 to 10 rooms each. Most of these cabins were built in the early days of mining in the district, but a few have been built within recent years.”

The Tamarack Mining Company alone owned 78 log dwellings, many of which have been sided and modernized, and are still occupied today.

The Copper Country was probably one of the few places in the U.S. where a resident could ride a streetcar from an electrically lighted shopping center to his or her mid-19th century log cabin.