The Daily Mining Gazette - Published: Wednesday, October 10, 2007 Print Article | Close Window Big Honor By JANE NORDBERG, DMG Writer MASON — Call it the “little community that could.” Mason, the 350-acre community on M-26 that once housed the workers for Lake Linden’s copper milling industry, has been added to the National Register of Historic Places. And it’s not even a town. Not to be confused with its downstate counterpart, a 7,200-person city located ten minutes from Lansing and the Ingham County seat, the Mason of the Upper Peninsula is a small cluster of homes located between Dollar Bay and Lake Linden of the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it variety. “Its official name is the Quincy Mining Company Stamp Mills Historic District,” said Kim Hoagland, a professor of social sciences at Michigan Technological University with a special interest in mining company housing. Its precisely those homes that make Mason especially valuable to those interested in historic preservation, she said. Although small, Mason “is one of the few intact company-built communities in the Keweenaw,” Hoagland said. Because the houses stayed in corporate control of the Quincy Development Co., there were not a lot of individual changes over time, she explained. “They are pretty much unaltered since they were built in the 1890s,” she said. Six houses were added in 1917, and some were demolished during a mining reclamation process in 1942. Still, enough of them remained in historic condition to spur Hoagland on a two-year project to get Mason the attention it deserved. Hoagland credited Larry Mishkar, a research associate with MTU’s industrial archeology program, with doing much of the legwork in talking with residents and taking photographs of all the homes to be included in the register application. “It takes a lot of time and energy, and Larry did a lot of work,” Hoagland said. “For the application, you need a basic history, a description of each property and a statement of significance as to why each property is important,” she said. The properties were then placed on a U.S. Geological Survey map and a written description of Mason’s boundaries also had to be included in the application to the State Historic Preservation Office (SHPO). Representatives from SHPO visited the site, looking at the boundaries and asking questions, Hoagland said. They recommended the site’s inclusion to the State Historic Review Board, who approved it in May 2007. They, in turn, sent it to the national register, which listed it in July, Hoagland said. “They don’t tell you,” she said. “They just post it on a Web site and you have to go in there periodically and check.” The listing not only includes the housing community of Mason but also its stamp mill ruins and the adjacent stamp sands. As a part of Osceola Township, Mason’s listing on the national register is something the township was very willing to support, both ideologically and also financially, in the form of a $500 contribution to the project. “We have Electric Park, the Dredge and other sites in the Dollar Bay area that we’d like to find grant money for so we can upgrade and interpret them for the future,” said Township Supervisor Steve Karpiak. Karpiak added that he’d like to continue working with Michigan Tech and its social sciences department to further that type of study. “It was a very cooperative arrangement,” he said. “We’re very happy to support them in their research and are very pleased with the result.” Because the listing will allow homeowners to apply for state tax credits for rehabilitation work (see related story), the immediate beneficiaries of the register listing are the residents of Mason. However, Hoagland said that over time, she is optimistic the listing will have wider positive impact. “I’m very happy at this recognition of the value of the community of Mason and I hope this will encourage other homeowners to take care of their historic houses,” she said. “We want people to know there are resources available to them in that process.” For more information on the National Register of Historic Places, go to www.nps.gov/nr/listings. Jane Nordberg can be reached at jnordberg@mininggazette.com