Keweenaw County has lost 70% of its population since its 1910 peak of 7,145. It has fewer residents now than it did in 1870. Like Houghton County, its only neighboring county, it has been treading water since 1950.
Population and map: Wikipedia
Headline: mlive, 8/15/2021
Keweenaw County may not have a lot of people, but it has ghost towns galore,
Detroit Free Press, 2/16/2018
The region is known to this day as Copper Country because it was home to America’s first mining boom, which, in its heyday, supplied nearly all the nation’s copper and created 10 times more wealth than the California Gold Rush. The era of copper mining still defines the peninsula, from the ruins of shafts and mills dotting the landscape, to the trackless railroad grades now used as snowmobile trails, to the thousands of miles of tunnels carved out beneath the peninsula.
But rising production costs, a failed strike by miners in 1913 that required the Michigan National Guard to restore order and the collapse of copper prices during the Great Depression effectively brought an end to mining in the region. A brief spike in demand during World War II revived a few mining companies, but after the war, the jobs again vanished, this time for good. So did the residents, who left ghost towns in their wake as they moved elsewhere, leaving the buildings to be slowly consumed by the elements.
Today, the Keweenaw Peninsula economy relies mostly on tourists who come for hiking, fishing, skiing or snowmobiling, plus some small-scale logging operations. But that’s a fraction of the economic activity of the glory days.
Related post:
Michigan population crisis in Saginaw County. (5/25/2023)
Michigan population time bomb: Wayne County has lost one-third of its residents since 1970. (5/16/2023)
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