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Ultra-Rare Two-Sided Calumet & Hecla "SouthSwedetown" & "Cellar Door" Brass Mining Key Tag
Inscription Front: GATE / SOUTH SWEDETOWN
Inscription Reverse: CELLAR DOOR
From the Ex-Estate of Leslie Liefer, Former Professor atMichigan Technological University. The label shown in the photos wasassociated with this tag, but is NOT INCLUDEDwith this sale.
Up for sale is a spectacular, museum-grade piece of localUpper Peninsula social and immigration history. This narrow rectangular brasstag features a single offset mounting hole and an incredible, authenticindustrial patina.
This is an exceptional artifact for Copper Countryhistorians because it features unique dual-sided cross-over stamping thatexplicitly names both an immigrant neighborhood and a specific domesticlocation.
"Swedetown" is the iconic, historic ethnicneighborhood located on the western edge of Calumet, Michigan, established bythe Calumet & Hecla Mining Company to house the massive influx ofScandinavian (Swedish and Finnish) immigrant miners. Because C&H tightlycontrolled almost all local land and infrastructure, this tag operated a secureperimeter company access gate leading into the South Swedetown neighborhoodsection of the property.
The reverse side is explicitly stamped "CELLARDOOR". C&H built hundreds of company-owned worker cottages acrossSwedetown, which utilized heavy external cellar doors or root cellars toprotect winter food stores and heating fuel from the fierce Keweenaw winters.Double-sided tags documenting specific neighborhood locations and domesticmining cottage infrastructure are virtually non-existent, making this a crownjewel for local history buffs and descendants of Keweenaw immigrant families.
