Houghton County Historical Museum

The Houghton County Historical Museum stands at 5500 M-26 in Lake Linden, Michigan, in the heart of Copper Country. Lake Linden was where the Calumet and Hecla Mining Company processed its copper ore at a large mill complex, an operation the company shut down in 1968, and the museum occupies the brick former Mill Office Building from that industrial era. Today the museum holds more than a century of photographs and artifacts across three floors of exhibits covering the region's copper mining, logging, and cultural history. The historical society's campus has grown well beyond a single building: it operates the 3-foot narrow gauge Lake Linden & Torch Lake Railroad, the one-room Traprock Valley School House, Lake Linden's First Congregational Church (serving as its Heritage Center), the Leo Chaput Log Cabin, and the Perl Merrill Research Center, which houses archives and a genealogical facility. The museum is also one of the cooperating Heritage Sites of Keweenaw National Historical Park, the federal-local park established in 1992 to celebrate the life and history of the Keweenaw Peninsula.