Mining for history: Blugold public history students research the past in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula

In 2023, a partnership was formed between UW-Eau Claire and the Keweenaw National Historical Park, located in Calumet. Each summer, two three-month long internships allow Blugolds to conduct research projects into the history of the area, known as “copper country” due to the extensive mining that took place there from the 1870s into the early 20th century.

The program was the idea of Dr. Cheryl Jimenez-Frei, an associate professor of public history, and the co-director of the public history program at UW-Eau Claire.

“I grew up in Michigan, so I had gone to that national park as a kid,” Jimenez-Frei says. “I approached one of the rangers in the visitor center when we moved to Eau Claire and asked if they would be interested in doing a partnership with our public history program.”

Part of the summerlong internship for students revolves around working in the visitor center, helping those who visit and answering their questions. Aside from that, each student gets to pick a specialized area of research to help dive deeper into the elements that make up the history of the Keweenaw Peninsula.

“The internship was predicated on the fact that, as a student, you’re going to be filling in the gaps in the knowledge of the National Park Service,” says Emery Day, a public history graduate student who was an intern there while an undergraduate student at UW-Eau Claire. “They didn’t have much information on public health, so that’s what I looked into.”

To find out more about the program, and more specifically about what Day learned in her research, access the video below.