Lake Superior significantly controls the climate of the Keweenaw Peninsula, keeping winters milder than those in surrounding areas. Spring is cool and brief, transitioning into a summer with highs near 70 °F (21 °C). Fall begins in September, with winter beginning in mid-November.

The peninsula receives copious amounts of lake-effect snow from Lake Superior. Official records are maintained close to the base of the peninsula in Hancock, Michigan, where the annual snowfall average is about 220 in (560 cm). Keweenaw County reports daily snowfall, and monthly and seasonal totals since 2006. In the Keweenaw community of Delaware, an unofficial record gives an average of about 240 in (610 cm) (1957-2011) and the record snowfall for one season of 390 in (990 cm) in 1979. Averages over 250 in (640 cm) certainly occur in the higher elevations closer to the tip of the peninsula.

Beginning as early as seven thousand years ago and apparently peaking around 3000 B.C., Native Americans dug copper from the southern shore of Lake Superior. This development was possible in large part because, in this region, large deposits of copper were easily accessible in surface rock and from shallow diggings. Native copper could be found as large nuggets and wiry masses. Copper as a resource for functional tooling achieved popularity around 3000 B.C., during the Middle Archaic Stage. The focus of copper working seems to have gradually shifted from functional tools to ornamental objects by the Late Archaic Stage c. 1200 B.C. Native Americans would build a fire to heat the rock around and over a copper mass and, after heating, pour on cold water to crack the rock. The copper was then pounded out, using rock hammers and stone chisels.

The Keweenaw's rich deposits of copper (and some silver) were extracted on an industrial scale beginning around the middle of the 19th century. The industry grew through the latter part of the century and employed thousands of people well into the 20th century. Hard rock mining in the region ceased in 1967 though copper sulfide deposits continued for some time after in Ontonagon. This vigorous industry created a need for educated mining professionals and directly led in 1885 to the founding of the Michigan Mining School (now Michigan Technological University) in Houghton. Although MTU discontinued its undergraduate mining engineering program in 2006, the university continues to offer engineering degrees in a variety of other disciplines. (In 2012 mining engineering was restarted in the re-formed Department of Geological and Mining Engineering and Sciences.)

Running concurrently with the mining boom in the Keweenaw was the white pine lumber boom. Trees were cut for timbers for mine shafts, to heat the communities around the large copper mines, and to help build a growing nation. Much of the logging at the time was done in winter due to the ease of operability with the snow. Due to the logging practices at that time, the forest of the Keweenaw looks much different today from 100 years ago.

US 41 terminates in the northern Keweenaw at the Michigan State Park housing Fort Wilkins. US 41 was the so-called "Military Trail" that started in Chicago in the 1900s and ended in the Keweenaw wilderness. The restored fort has numerous exhibits.

For detailed information on the region's mineralogical history, see the virtual tour of the peninsula written by the Mineralogical Society of America, found in "External links" on this page. Inf…

Read more on Wikipedia

• Copper mining in Michigan
• Keweenaw National Historical Park
• Leelanau Peninsula
• Thimbleberry
• The Thumb