The history and development of Lake Linden and the area around it has always been intrinsically linked to the presence of Torch Lake. For centuries, groups of Ojibwa Indians made use of the lake’s fishing and trapping resources and took advantage of its value as a transportation route which allowed access into the center of the Keweenaw Peninsula.
In the mid-1860’s, the soon to be consolidated Calumet and Hecla Mining Companies recognized the significance of Torch Lake as a site for their stamp mills. Its inland location, immense volume, connection to Portage Lake, and proximity to the already burgeoning community in Lake Linden made it an ideal location. The mills were running by 1867 and drew workers to the area, who soon settled in the nearby village.
The geography of Torch Lake again played an important part in encouraging the development of an old growth lumber industry. Joseph Grégoire, a French Canadian immigrant, settled in the local area in 1859 and set up a sawmill on the east shore of Torch Lake. He designed the mill to meet the two largest lumber demands in the local area—lumber to shore up the underground mine shafts and for the construction of the first generation of residential and commercial buildings. He soon became a major promoter for the immigration of his French Canadian brethren.
As work opportunities increased, so did the demands of the population. Commercial, social, and religious needs formed a large niche which needed to be filled locally as travel to nearby Red Jacket was becoming much more inconvenient and increasingly unnecessary. Lake Linden’s geographic location—separate from the larger population centers as well as on Torch Lake—created a mill town with a strong commercial base, an unprecedented phenomenon in the Copper Country. The shipping capabilities of the lake transformed the Village into an important shipping center, both for C&H as it shipped out product and for the importation of goods which benefited local merchants.
This created a fertile economic soil that enabled the development of many successful businesses, even during the Village’s early days. An example of this is Joseph Bosch, a German immigrant who traveled the Midwest to be trained as a brewmaster before returning to Lake Linden to open the Torch Lake Brewery in 1874. The company, which later became the Bosch Brewery, was soon the largest producer of beer in the Keweenaw and, by 1889, the largest in the Upper Peninsula as well. The company survived Prohibition and continued successfully for decades after Bosch’s death in 1937.
The entire Village suffered a devastating blow in May 1887, when a major fire destroyed 40 acres of the young settlement, taking out much of the wood frame commercial and residential core. In response to the loss, a fire code was established, requiring that buildings within a certain area be built of fire-resistant materials. This resulted in the transformation of Calumet Street into a modern, elegant commercial district of brick and sandstone buildings with Italianate storefronts. Numerous businesses set up in the downtown, including institutions not traditionally found in communities of Lake Linden’s size. Architecturally impressive churches, schools, and public buildings put the Village on par with its larger counterparts.
At the turn of the 20th century, many companies began to feel the economic pinch of the falling prices of copper combined with the increased cost of working underground. Calumet & Hecla successfully countered this dilemma by the development and adoption of the reclamation and leaching processes. The former was able to recycle and extract much of the remaining copper in the stamp sands—a by-product the company had considered waste and which had built up in the lake for almost half a century. The leaching process utilized a chemical process which removed more copper from the rock than the traditional water-based gravitational method C&H had always used. Therefore, while the smaller mining companies were forced into closure or were bought-out by larger conglomerates, C&H’s mill employees had job security, which, in turn, strengthened Lake Linden.
In the decades following the Depression and World War II, the copper mining industry in the Keweenaw would completely succumb to the economic forces that brought on its decline, and with the closure of C&H in 1968, the mill town of Lake Linden lost the major employer it had depended on for a century. However, as is the case with other post-industrial communities, Lake Linden has survived by transforming itself from an industry-based economy to one that is service-based.