File talk:TamarackMiners CopperCountryMI sepia.jpg

Email received from Keweenaw National Historical Park

Dear Mr. Cheng,

Thank you for your interest in featuring an historic Copper Country image
on Wikipedia, and thank you for contacting us to request more information
about the image. We certainly appreciate the opportunity to share the
unique history of the Copper Country with such a broad audience. If you
could provide a link to Keweenaw National Historical Park's homepage with
the image, we would much appreciate it. Please credit the image to
Keweenaw National Historical Park Archives, Jack Foster Collection.

The photo you have asked about was taken by a professional photographer
named Adolph F. Isler. Isler was born in Switzerland in 1848. He
immigrated to the United States with his family in 1854, and settled in
the Copper Country. He worked as a druggist, and he was the chief
pharmacist at the Calumet and Hecla Mining Company hospital from 1882-1887.
In later years became a professional photographer, with studios in Calumet
and Lake Linden, Michigan. Isler died in 1912.

The photo of the miners at Tamarack is taken of a group of miners on a pile
of "poor rock" or waste rock, which had been broken off the richer
copper-bearing rock in the Tamarack #5 Shaft-Rockhouse seen in the
background of the image, after it had been hauled up out of the mine.
Pictures such as these were usually taken during the shift-change, just as
miners were going down into, or had just come up from the mines. The men
are carrying lunch pails, but some have not yet changed their street
clothes for work clothes (or perhaps have already changed to go home,
depending on whether they are going to work or going home from work). As
you note, some of the men appear to be quite young.

I will attach two short Word documents to this email, one giving more
detailed information on the Tamarack Mining Company #5 shaft, excerpted
from the book Tamarack Town: Mines, People, Places (1982) by Paul T.
Steele, and another giving information about child-labor practices in the
mines of the Copper Country, excerpted from the book Cradle to Grave: Life,
Work, and Death at the Lake Superior Copper Mines (1991) by Larry Lankton.

(See attached file: Child Labor Compilation.doc)(See attached file:
Tamarack No.5.doc)

Thank you again for your interest in the heritage of the Keweenaw, and
please don't hesitate to contact me if you have any questions or would like
further assistance.

Sincerely,

Jeremiah

Jeremiah Mason, Archives Technician
Keweenaw National Historical Park
PO Box 471, 25970 Red Jacket Rd
Calumet, Michigan 49913-0471

906.337.3168
http://www.nps.gov/kewe

jeremiah_mason AT nps DOT gov