Calumet is a village
in Calumet Township, Houghton County, in the U.S. state of Michigan's
Upper Peninsula, that was once at the center of the mining industry
of the Upper Peninsula. Calumet was settled in 1864, originally under
the name of "Red Jacket", named for a Native American Chief of the
Seneca tribe. Until 1895 the name "Calumet" was used by the nearby
town of Laurium, Michigan; present day Calumet was not legally named
so until 1929.
The village of Calumet
nows sits on over 2,000 miles of underground mine shafts, drifts and
stopes, all empty since 1939. One of the biggest part of the culture
of not only Calumet, but the entire Copper Country is the pasty. This
was a main part of copper miners' diets. A pasty is a mixture of meat,
potatoes, rutabaga, carrots and onions wrapped in a crust made of
flour and lard.
Today Calumet is known
for some of the best snowmobiling in the Keweenaw peninsula.