Keweenaw Time Traveler Earns a Governor’s Award for Historic Preservation

Four Michigan preservation projects including one in the Keweenaw Peninsula, earned Governor’s Awards for Historic Preservation. Last week Lt. Governor Garlin Gilchrist II awarded four Governor’s Awards for Historic Preservation at the State Historic Preservation Office’s ceremony. One award was given Michigan Technological University Department of Social Sciences and Geo spatial Research Facility, the University’s Archives, Monte Consulting, the Carnegie Museum of the Keweenaw Peninsula, Keweenaw County Historical Society, and the Keweenaw National Historic Par Advisory Commission for work on the Keweenaw Time Traveler project.

Keweenaw Time Traveler offers geo-tagged education programs and details about an area’s history in connection to the Copper Country all across the Keweenaw Peninsula. The geo-spatial research project has digitally connected over 2000 historic data and maps connected to recreational features set up at locations such as Centennial Park in Chassell. Throughout the project, Michigan Tech researchers and students have teamed up with citizen historians from the local area to digitally archive the region’s past for generations in the future. Most of the project has mapped data across the peninsula from the years 1870 to 1940. Representative Greg Markkanen of the 110th district says that the Keweenaw Time Traveler Project has been an invaluable resource to new residents wanting to learn about their new home, and for lifelong residents like himself, who has even used the interactive project to search historical records of his address.

The other three projects to earn a governor award for historic preservation included a rehabilitation project of the Malcolm X house in Inkster, a national register designation for the East Ludington residential area, and the stewardship of lighthouses connected to the Hiawatha National Forest, such as Grand Island North Lighthouse in Munising.

Learn more about Keweenaw Time Traveler here.

Learn about the other Governor’s Awards here.