Break Down the Nature-Culture Divide in Parks

770 The Journal of American History December 2013

(p. 15). The authors respond by offering a litany of fixes: break down the nature-culture divide in parks; highlight the open-ended nature of the past; embrace controversy and dis- parate understandings of history; learn from the public; work more closely with scholars in the academy. These suggestions could, if implemented, usher in a new era for history in the . In the end, however, the agency finds itself in a state of ongoing organizational triage. Like so many other gears of the federal apparatus in recent years, the  has faced massive budget cuts. And with the so-called sequester contracting rather than expanding funding, there appears to be little cause for optimism. Given the fiscal realities, one wonders if the  has the resources necessary to stem the bleeding and embrace best historical practices— or if the ghost of George Hartzog will enjoy the last laugh.

Ari Kelman Downloaded from University of California–Davis Davis, California doi: 10.1093/jahist/jat460 http://jah.oxfordjournals.org/ Keweenaw National Historic Park, Calumet, Mich. http://www.nps.gov/kewe/index.htm. Permanent exhibition. Park established 1992. Permanent exhibition. “Risk and Resilience: Life in a Copper Mining Community” exhibit, opened 2011. 7,000 sq. ft. National Park Service, curatorial director; Krister Olmon, exhibit designer; Harvest Moon Studios, exhibit script. Permanent exhibition. Keweenaw Heritage Site at Quincy Mine no. 2, opened 1994. Quincy

Mine Hoist Association, interpretation and mine tours. at Knox College on April 3, 2014 Permanent exhibition. Self-guided tours of downtown and industrial Calumet, opened 1992.

Copper is no longer mined on Michigan’s Keweenaw Peninsula, but the remaining scars of industry are visible reminders of the corporations that once dominated that landscape along Lake Superior. Twentieth-century deindustrialization created hardships for residents and municipalities in funding basic improvements and developing a new economy. When one industry inﬂuenced nearly every aspect of community life and then gradually disappeared, the residents were left to recuperate, sort through their historical memories, and create a new direction. Following the demolition of the Italian Hall in Calumet, Michigan, in 1984, where seventy- four people (mostly children) died tragically during the copper miners’ strike of 1913–1914, preservationists recognized the need to heighten awareness of local history. Historians and mining enthusiasts took it upon themselves to preserve the history of copper mining and create a vision that became the Keweenaw Historical National Park (), signed into being by President George H. W. Bush on October 27, 1992. The National Park Service () helped Calumet residents and partnering historic sites preserve the area’s stories and the landscape. In 2011 the  opened a multimillion-dollar visitor center inside a refurbished fraternal lodge building. Through the visitor center and formal partnerships the  has endorsed twenty Kewee- naw Heritage Sites, each managed by a variety of entities that help visitors explore how copper mining deﬁned people’s lives. This review covers the introductory exhibit in the Calumet Visitor Center, Keweenaw Heritage Site at Quincy Mine no. 2, and the walking tours that explore the industrial and downtown districts of Calumet. Exhibition Reviews 771

Calumet Visitor Center The centerpiece of the  is the core exhibit at the visitor center, “Risk and Resilience: Life in a Copper Mining Community,” which opened in 2011. To develop this exhibit, park staff sought input from stakeholders such as public and academic historians, mining enthusiasts, and the community at large. Area residents and tourists contributed ideas via question- naire kiosks, and a hired facilitator gathered information and perspectives at community meetings. The  historian Celeste Urion conducted oral histories with long-standing residents to incorporate more fully the voices of those who experienced this history. To extract broader patterns and context, park service staff held a round table with academic historians who had expertise in the copper region or who could provide relevant context on immigration or leisure history. As is increasingly typical for long-term installations, the  outsourced Downloaded from the exhibit design to Krister Olmon and had the script written by Harvest Moon Studios. Local firms completed much of the building’s restoration and exhibit construction, which provided training for similar preservation projects in the area. Entering the exhibit on the main floor, visitors first encounter a small gallery that dem- http://jah.oxfordjournals.org/ onstrates why so many people considered copper a good investment. The exhibit narrative explains that Native Americans successfully extracted the area’s copper long before white Americans. The text also reminds visitors that like all mineral mining rushes, many failed explorations and mining attempts predated the boom. By the Civil War, the industry had made successful dis- coveries; its growth was fueled by national and technological influences. Using artifacts as examples, the curators support the narrative by showing the various copper parts used in items from military equipment to home appliances, each believed to be vital to the moderniza- tion of the United States. A listening device for visitors introduces Alexander Agassiz, presi- at Knox College on April 3, 2014 dent of Calumet and Hecla Mining Company until 1910, and transmits his first-person explanation of how his passion for natural history drew him to the peninsula. As the re- cording describes, Agassiz hoped to raise funds to become a “productive naturalist,” but the mine owners recognized his managerial talents and promoted him to company president. Being a staunch antiunionist, Agassiz created a “model settlement” for his employees to dis- courage strikes and create a system to exert company control—an underlying theme throughout the exhibit. A loud factory steam whistle welcomes visitors to the second floor as they step into broad subjects that defined life in Calumet. Divided into themes such as immigration, housing, education, and leisure, each section shows how the company was ever-present through residents’ and miners’ work, rest, and play. Like the management styles of many corporate leaders of the time, Agassiz’sisdefined as paternalism, which is discussed in works by the historians Larry Lankton and Alison K. Hoagland. The curators of “Risk and Resilience” choose not to use this term explicitly, but the scholarship on the concept plays an important role in the exhibit. As the narrative explains, Calumet’s city grid was intermixed with company-owned and employee/public–owned properties and services. For example, employees who lived on company property had a company fire department and a private security firm, while their neighbors may have relied on municipal services. If someone’s house needed to be painted or a resident wanted indoor plumbing, the company delivered this service, but only if the requester lived on company property. Under this arrangement, management controlled the work force by awarding company benefits only to preferred employees who were in good standing. Management could also remove workers from the company’s safety net with a 772 The Journal of American History December 2013 debilitating injury or allegations of poor performance. Nevertheless, the exhibit’s selected evidence and straightforward script provide visitors with an understanding of how the “model settlement” benefited the company and some employees. Large silhouettes of notable architectural features in the community divide each section of the exhibit. This organizational style helps visitors focus on main ideas and clearly demar- cates when they enter a new exhibit theme. Using visual, auditory, and tactile experiences, the curators deliver history via multilayered learning styles. The artifacts selected for each section are ones commonly found in many small historical societies; however, the interpretation successfully links their meaning to the theme of company control. A young child’s crutch is used to explain child labor and how medical services were unevenly distributed in ’ the community. Opening the tops of three school desks reveals Mary Frances Sharpe s Downloaded from Plain Facts for Future Citizens (1914), a book that underscores the efforts to Americanize the children of immigrants. Inside a long display case, visitors view sacred artifacts from a variety of religions, emphasizing the ethnic diversity of Calumet. Further interpretation explains how the mining company determined who could erect churches and where they could be built. http://jah.oxfordjournals.org/ The curators provide occasional examples of men and women who challenged the system. In an oral history Eleanor Buckett recounts a simple form of opposition to strict company rules with her mother’s illegal production of homemade liquor on Calumet and Hecla Mining Com- pany land. Discussion about unionization in the mines, particularly by the Western Federation of Miners (), is mostly limited to activity during the copper workers strike of 1913–1914, despite other efforts to organize. Regrettably, the exhibit’s analysis of the strike is brief, with only a small section dedicated to the violence and the major divisions that defined the event. The script does explain how women such as Mary Harris “Mother” Jones and Anna “Big at Knox College on April 3, 2014 Annie” Clemenc organized workers and sustained the movement. Strike-related artifacts such asaminedeputy’sbadgeandaCitizens’ Alliance button demonstrate that many community members supported the mine owners. At times, the exhibit treats the strike as an isolated occurrence and lays blame for the unrest too heavily on the implementation of new technology, such as the one-man drill. Unionists had significant grievances, alluded to elsewhere in the exhibit, such as the unequal distribution of paternal benefits and prejudice by management against newer immigrants. Placing the strike in a broader context would demonstrate why the  saw the strike as justifiable and why workers sacrificed their livelihood for the cause. Continuing with themes that defined the community, another section of the exhibit ex- plores the building’s history as a fraternal lodge by discussing how fraternities contributed to the community. Visitors are visibly engaged by the material, especially the opportunity to watch videos about the organizations, each contained inside a regalia closet and cleverly ac- tivated by opening the closet doors. At the visitor reception area,  staff and volunteers also provide tourists with a booklet about the building’s history. Together, the booklet and the exhibit provide a rich understanding of the fraternities that boomed in Calumet in the late 1800s. The fraternal history is an important subtheme within the visitor center, demonstrating how the clubs exerted their own social control and imprinted their morals on their membership, further complicating politics within the community. Clever use of multimedia and visitor memories to validate many of the key themes makes the exhibition especially engaging. A section about remembering the Italian Hall includes video interviews of participants in the building’s demolition and discussions of the failed attempt at building preservation. Curators also encourage visitors to share publicly their Exhibition Reviews 773 family stories about the building’s demolition and the 1913 tragedy by writing in a journal. Similarly, a journal in a section on immigration asks visitors to share what citizen- ship means to them. This activity inspires visitors to add their curatorial voices, and the replies also offer a fascinating study for students of public history and memory. Each video and listening device provides a written transcript for the hearing impaired. Visitors can acti- vate a map to trace major immigration routes, and a computer kiosk shows how the local community physically grew with each major wave of immigration. With multimedia and thematic storytelling the visitor center provides the basic tools for residents and tourists to explore other towns and mines throughout the Keweenaw Peninsula.

Keweenaw Heritage Sites Downloaded from The  cultivates many formal beneficial partnerships with twenty historical sites and museums within the park boundaries and on the broader Keweenaw Peninsula. Each site visit is like a case study of a very narrow biography, community, or event that illuminates how men and women experienced the copper boom. Each of the sites are independent and http://jah.oxfordjournals.org/ operate with different staffing, from professionally trained employees to all-volunteer organizations. Visitors to the sites hear plenty of genealogy, as the volunteers and visitors willingly share their family’s ancestral connections to the copper industry. Most of the sites are season- ally operated, and during my late spring visit only a few heritage sites were available for review. Park staff also encourage visitors to travel off the main roads to witness the many remnants of company housing and support facilities that dot the landscape. For example, Quincy Mine no. 2, the  principal partner site, offers a glimpse into the world below the residential districts, where the mine workers toiled to earn a living. After vis- at Knox College on April 3, 2014 itors put on jackets and hard hats, tour guides lead the group to a modern cograil car for a steep downhill ride to a mine access tunnel. Once visitors are inside the drift, the guide explains the dangers that skilled and unskilled workers faced while drilling, blasting, and hauling copper rock from the mine. Stressing the teamwork required in mining, the guide demonstrates how miners drilled into the copper veins by hand and then blasted to free copper rock for removal. Initially, workers mined by candlelight, and to demonstrate the challenges of the dimly lit work this part of the tour is conducted by one flickering wick. Blowing out the candle (fright- ening one tour participant), the narrator explains how the black abyss caused workers to fall down shafts or be hopelessly stranded until a fellow worker heard the cries for help. Death was a weekly occurrence, as the tour guide reminds visitors, and the management’s apathetic regard for workplace safety contributed to unionization and social upheaval. While underground, the tour visits the site of a one-man drill—one of many catalysts for the strike of 1913–1914. Management brought one-man drills to the mine in 1913, hoping they would speed production and disrupt  efforts to unionize. Workers feared that the one-man machines would deskill miners, put many out of work, and increase on-the-job injuries because each miner now worked alone. As the tour narrator explains, the work performed deep within the mine was discriminatory, based on ethnicity. American-born miners and immigrants who had been in the United States the longest filled skilled mining positions, while foreign-born Finns, eastern Europeans, and southern Europeans were typecast to hard labor. Returning up the hill, tourists converse about family lore of mine collapses and the grueling underground work, demonstrating the power of place to create conversations about the past. 774 The Journal of American History December 2013

Walking Tours of Calumet Another component that combines the services of the visitor center and its partner sites is the opportunity for self-guided or park service–led tours of Calumet. The authorized park boundaries encompass the business district and the industrial corridor that separated the historic communities around the Calumet and Hecla mine sites. Most of the properties within the formal boundary are privately owned, and the tours weave through existing residential and commercial districts. The tours are essential to understanding the 1913–1914 strike and how paternalism informed the lives of the mine employees. The booklets provided for the tours give additional context to key subjects covered in the exhibit, and they enhance the interpretation of how social control was applied within the community. Physical reminders of the industry, such as rusty preserved equipment, piles of stamp sand, and the company- Downloaded from built landscape, are apparent at every turn. While a tour of Quincy Mine no. 2 explains underground work, a tour of Calumet’s industrial corridor explains the surface support operations by blacksmiths, patternmakers, ma- chinists, and railroad workers. Using the tour booklet visitors get a thorough understanding http://jah.oxfordjournals.org/ of the hierarchy of work above and below ground and how it related to ethnicity, child labor, and gender—women were excluded from most mine work. Although the company even- tually capped most of the mine shafts and demolished many of the factories, enough auxiliary buildings exist to provide a glimpse of the area one hundred years ago. On this tour, too, visitors are reminded how work, play, and rest were intertwined. Located in the mining community were a company-built library, bathhouse, company firehouse, and public schools. The tour booklet describes how the schools were built next to company offices, reinforcing the mine corporation’sinfluence on the curriculum. at Knox College on April 3, 2014 Walking on the downtown Calumet tour provides further opportunity to observe how the Calumet and Hecla Mining Company influenced businesses that were unaffiliated with the company. Mine officials decided not to operate company stores; therefore, a semi-independent commercial district developed outside company property. The tour booklets remind visitors that even in the downtown, shoppers would have heard the hissing sounds, smelled the odors, and felt the vibrations from pulsing machines and underground blasts. The economic ruin that followed the mine’s closure delayed redevelopment and reinvestment in the downtown, inadvertently preserving the city’s physical appearance from the early 1900s. Tour- ists can visit the Red Jacket Fire Station (now home to the Upper Peninsula Firefighters Memorial Museum) and the beautifully restored Calumet Theater, walk through neighborhoods of cookie- cutter company-built houses, and see a multitude of ethnic churches. Noticeably absent on the tour, in the exhibit, and at the partner sites are people of color, who also work, rest, and play on the Keweenaw Peninsula. In the exhibit, curators display photographs, including a local photographer’s work, of historic ethnic communities in Calumet; several photos are of black and Asian men. Giving people of color agency by including their stories in the exhibit and the walking tour would provide visitors with important context and further understanding of how race and ethnicity defined life during the copper boom.

Italian Hall Memorial Park The walking tour includes a stop at the solemn Italian Hall Memorial Park, which commem- orates a tragic episode from the strike. On Christmas Eve in 1913, the women’s auxiliary of Exhibition Reviews 775 the  organized a multiethnic party on the second floor of the hall to benefit striking fam- ilies. Witness reports varied, but most people claimed someone yelled “fire,” causing a pan- icked stampede down the stairs where seventy-four people suffocated. The strike ended the following spring, but the mines never fully recovered. In 1984, the Friends of Italian Hall and Local 324 of the American Federation of Labor–Congress of Industrial Organizations (-) created the green space after the building was demolished, saving only the sand- stone arch that formed the entryway to the hall. The tour guidebook and a Michigan His- toric Site marker interpret the location’s history, outlining the tragedy’s relationship to the strike and narrating preservationists’ failed efforts to save the building. Visitors to the  would have difficulty finding contemporary labor’s perspective on the memory of the strike and the copper boom. When the Italian Hall Memorial Park did in- Downloaded from clude the perspective of unionized workers, it was a powerful and direct summary of many of the lasting consequences of the industry’s decline. The simple - plaque affixed to the monument recites a quote attributed to Mother Jones: “Mourn for the dead, but fight for the living.” Standing in the archway, near a pile of stamp sand, across from vacant buildings and near houses still home to people who are fighting for Calumet’s future, the lasting http://jah.oxfordjournals.org/ consequences of the boom are most apparent. Exactly one hundred years after unionized residents fought against corporate control, people are still struggling in the aftermath of the strike and deindustrialization, but they are gradually trying to climb out of the mining company shadow. As state legislatures flirt with the proposition of mining booms, the opportunity for fast fortune can make the potential legacy of heavy industry difficult to imagine. This is why the  ’

matters today. Already, North Dakota s oil companies are recruiting workers, exerting at Knox College on April 3, 2014 social control, and using a paternalistic management style similar to Agassiz’s. In the north woods of Wisconsin, environmental protections have been relaxed, perhaps paving the way for another mining boom on Lake Superior. Nearby, on the Keweenaw Peninsula, shore- lines are clogged with heavy metals that seep from stamp sand into the Great Lakes. What the  does best is teach visitors about the rise and decline of a boomtown and how corporations controlled every aspect of life for its work force. I hope this information better equips tourists and residents to understand how corporate agendas have a lasting inﬂuence on the landscape and communities they inhabit. Nicholas J. Hoffman History Museum at the Castle Appleton, Wisconsin doi: 10.1093/jahist/jat458

National Museum of Health and Medicine, U.S. Army Fort Detrick Forest Glen Annex, Sil- ver Spring, Md. http://www.medicalmuseum.mil/. Permanentexhibition,openedMay2012.5,000sq.ft.AdrienneNoe,museumdirector; Gallagher & Associates, exhibit planning and design; KlingStubbins in coordination with the Baltimore district of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, architecture and engineering.

On May 21, 2012, 150 years to the day after Surgeon General William Hammond authorized the creation of the Army Medical Museum, its latest incarnation, the National Museum of Health and Medicine (), reopened in a new, purpose-built building on the grounds