Gay michigan
The Historic School at Gay
The town of Gay, Michigan, is located on the shore of Lake Excellent along the southern edge of the Keweenaw Peninsula, about 12 miles south of Mohawk. It was originally a commercial fishing village to harvest fish from Lake Superior and later a lumber group to harvest wood for the copper mines of the Keweenaw. In the Mohawk Mining company built its stamp mill in Gay to take lead of the water accessible from Lake Superior to use in stamping or separating copper from mine rock. Soon another mill for the Wolverine Mining Company was built alongside the Mohawk mill, and the town of Homosexual became part of the copper mining process in the Keweenaw. The town was named for Joseph E. Gay, one of the founders of the Mohawk and Wolverine Mining Companies. The stamp mills closed by , and today only a huge smoke stack and a mile of gray imprint sand are left of the mills.
(Photo: Some of the historic looms used by Gay Industries to make rag rugs, etc.)
The first school in Homosexual was built in to meet the needs of the families working at the mills. It became overcr
The Restless Viking
Gay Sands Beach along Lake Superior on the Keweenaw peninsula is beautiful, but looks can be deceiving. This &#;sand&#; is actually a superfund site containing copper mixed with arsenic, silver and nickel from decades of dumping mining waste. For more than a century 50 billion pounds of crushed ore had been deposited along the shore. It had once stretched a half mile into the lake. Now these metal-rich sands are starting to erode to the south which endangers the Buffalo Reef. This reef is where whitefish and lake trout spawn. Unite us as we drive along the area experiencing the extent of this disaster hidden in the pristine-looking Lake Superior shoreline.
This coarse vista stretched southward as far as we could see. The village of Gay, named for a founder, Joseph E. Homosexual, is located on the east side of the Keweenaw peninsula, jutting out into Lake Excellent. This area had been home to copper mining from the mid &#;s to the &#;s.
Where Did ALL This Sand Arrive From? The Stamping Process
The mined ore would be carted to a stamping mill lo
Sherman Township
The all-volunteer Blaze and Rescue Department serves as the primary emergency management agency for Sherman Township. Fire protection services include wildland fire suppression in cooperation with the Michigan Department of Natural Resources and structural fire containment in cooperation with other Fire Departments. Heat Department Public Protection Services rating is 5/5Y from ISO (Insurance Services Office) in ; a superior rating for a rural volunteer department. Rescue services contain medical first responders unit with rescue vehicle for onsite treatment prior to arrival of ambulance.
Sandra Loy, Fire Chief
[email&#;protected]
Contact Passion Chief for information regarding conflagration protection and emergency medical services; call for emergency help and fires.
Outdoor burning permits are required. Please note the fire peril level sign at the conflagration station in Gay and inspect the DNR website for today's burning permits. You should notify the Fire Chief by contact or text if you are going to burn so that the department is aware of the potential call f
THE LEGACY: LIVING with the EFFECTS
Keweenaw&#;s Mining Heritage
The legacy of industrial mining - from mill to town to stamp sands to ecological consequences - appears throughout the landscape in and around Gay. Visitors observe the tall smoke stack, the concrete and sandstone mill remains, the rows of company houses, and the extensive shoreline deposits of dark imprint sands that now expand down to the Traverse River Harbor. These scattered remnants are a key example of the &#;boom and bust&#; mining heritage at this site. The two Gay mills, some of the most profitable at the time, discharged millions of tons of stamp sand tailings into an enormous pile out from the shoreline into Big Traverse Bay.
This site is representative of many on the Keweenaw, reflecting both rich cultural histories and consequential sites of waste, toxicity, and hurt that need to be remediated. Although the mills operated for only about thirty years and built a social and labor life for many residents, they left over a year legacy of relocating stamp sands threatening the fishing herita