From the Copper Country to the Color Country

The field school students are all on the road!  

Two vehicles left from Michigan Technological University this week, carrying people and gear for the dig.  Our incoming graduate students have left from their home states in order to rendezvous in Parowan, Utah, this Sunday.  We also have some people arriving by plane at the Las Vegas airport.  We'll start work on Monday morning, bright and early.  The experience will be interesting for the MTU students, who are traveling from Michigan's Copper Country to Utah's Color Country.

Michigan Tech is on Michigan's Upper Peninsula, on the south shore of Lake Superior. The Keweenaw Peninsula juts out into the lake and includes the former grandeur of the copper mine and mill towns like Calumet, Houghton, and Hancock.  The copper deposits of the Keweenaw Peninsula were famous all over the world, as were the mines and immigrants came from all over the world to work in the mines, mills, and logging camps.  After decline during the twentieth century, the copper country is rural today and the economy relies upon tourism. 'Downstaters' visit during the winter for our 350 inches of annual snow and our Winter Carnival celebration.  People also visit during the summer and fall, when the big lake keeps us cool during the hot Midwestern July and August and when our leaves start to turn in the fall.

Of course, Iron County is part of Utah's Color Country.  The history of Iron County is similar in many ways to Michigan's Keweenaw.  The draw of iron mining and other related industries drew immigrants, in the context of the Latter-day Saint settlement.  The iron mines and furnaces cycled through boom and bust, leading to a decline in the mid-twentieth century.  Iron County is rural today, between larger cities and communities on the Wasatch Front to the north and St. George and Las Vegas to the south.  The economy is diversified, but tourism plays an important part.  Visitors come for the skiing in the winter and camping and hiking in the summer, enjoying the communities proximity to Cedar Breaks National Monument, Zion National Park, Bryce Canyon National Park, and many other eco- and heritage tourism attractions amid southern Utah's stunning polychrome geology.  Cedar City's Utah Shakespeare Festival runs from summer into the fall, and like MTU's Winter Carnival, it attracts guests and encourages families to come year after year.

Another similarity is that both communities are small, with 10,000 to 15,000 people in the cities and good universities (Michigan Tech and Southern Utah University).  Despite the small size, the former industrial booms mean that lots and lots of people have family history tied to the area.  I am constantly meeting people when I travel who tell me, "Oh, Houghton!  My Grandfather worked there." or "I have an ancestor from Parowan who then moved to northern Arizona."  Houghton and Hancock share some of Parowan's famous claim to be a Mother Town from which individuals and groups of immigrants struck out to other places in the United States.  

As an afterthought, both regions also have great traditions of local music. Check out these musicians:
Houghton's Hanna Bethel just posted a video on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8S5dSaz6cA&feature=player_embedded
and our own Eric Koskinen, although he now lives in Minneapolis:
http://www.erikkoskinen.com/

You can find great music in Cedar City at Groovacious Records:
http://www.groovacious.com/
and live at The Grind:
http://groovinatthegrind.com/

Downhill to the Opening

We finished some major tasks this week, and I feel tired and satisfied. The exhibit panels, images, and video/audio elements were the biggest push, and Ryan and I got them all into production. Darrin and Benjamin at Mishap Studios finished the first set with us and the panels went to the print shop to be printed and mounted on foam core. Ryan and I picked up the first set of panels today, and we'll hang them tomorrow. In the photo below, Ryan and Rick Cleveland of Rainbow Sign and Banner are holding the exhibit's welcome sign.



I also spent time with Benjamin today, as we selected video and audio clips for different parts of the exhibit. I was again impressed by Mishap Studio's computer set up. They are working this weekend on the exhibit's touch-screen video.

Ryan will also work with Mishap to record the audio for our "black box theater." I am using this theater to allow people to hear the voice of Heber C. Kimball, a potter and pioneer Latter-day Saint.  The narrator will read some of Kimball's sermons, while museum visitors sit in a darkened box with dramatically lit pottery.


I've finally finished painting vitrine bases. Just a few morning touch ups and then the paint can cure until we put ceramics on the bases and seal the acrylic boxes over top.  It feels great to be done painting!


This week we also finished the exhibit booklet. I wrote an essay I think is unlike most exhibit catalogs. I didn't inventory the stuff in the show, but wrote instead about the Utah Pottery Project and the potters. I suppose the essay is a bit passionate, but I think most people who come to the show will understand. I hope the entire endeavor encourages people to think about Historical and Industrial Archaeology in Utah as well as cultural heritage generally.

Kudos to Stefanie Michaelson and Karen Krieger at Utah State Parks for their herculean efforts to edit the booklet and finish the beautiful design!

Mobile blog post

Weekend Exhibit Work

I'm having a busy weekend! Gibb finished the vitrine bases in the shop. Larry and Murph are painting them. Ryan and I went up to Sandy, near Salt Lake City, to meet Gary and Jill Thompson. We completed condition reports on his collection and moved them down to the Iron Mission Museum.



I offered to help the museum staff with some public programming activities. We hosted a big group of Boy Scouts. I taught them about Paiute pump drills. It was a nice break from exhibit preparation and field school planning.

The Iron Mission Museum keeps making progress on several other projects. Below is a photo of the replica the museum is building of the blast furnace that residents operated in Cedar City in the 1850s.  The wood frame will be covered with a facade of stone, which will give it the look of the old furnace at  much lest cost.  The interior of the furnace will be filled with interpretive exhibits.  It should be done by early June.




My next post will be about the field school schedule.

Mobile blog post

New Digs!

I am pleased to report that my colleagues at the Iron Mission State Park Museum did a bit of scrounging around in the Department of Natural Resources.  They borrowed a camper trailer for me, so I have moved up in the world from camping in my Nissan Xterra to camping in a trailer larger than some of the apartments I lived in when I was in college.  I have filled a propane tank, so I can cook on the range, and when the threat of freezing passes, we'll hook up the hose and my trailer will have hot showers.  Living in the lap of luxury!

The fire crews will need their trailer back in May, so we won't be hauling it up the canyon for our field camp and lab, but I am very grateful for the loan during the next two months while we put the exhibit together.  It is thrilling to have a table where I can plug in my laptop and keep working into the evening hours.  Of course, I am equally happy that I no longer have to scrape the snow and/or frost off my tailgate before I climb out of my sleeping bag!