# Calumet High School #2



## dennis (Apr 29, 2015)

*The picture of the machine shop was taken many years ago when the C   & H  Mining Co. used the school as a manual training center.  Iattended  the school as a student  and eventually became the Drafting/Cad teacher. I taught there for 34 years, retiring in 2007.  None of the original equipment is there anymore.  There is a woodshop, metalshop, and a drafting/Cad room now.  The students now use computers, newer lathes, etc. and cnc machines, and 3D printers.



C-L-K District History*

School District No. 1 of Calumet Township was organized on September 2, 1867, as a primary school district, but just two years later, on September 6, 1869, the voters of the district approved the Board of Education's proposal that "the present primary school district be forthwith changed to a graded school."  It is not known if high school subjects were offered immediately after that change, but at least the legal framework was in place to do so.

The events were moving swiftly is evident from the fact that just ten years after the discovery of the Calumet Conglomerate Lode in 1864, five schools had already been built and a sixth was begun -- bigger and better than the other five combined.

The new Central School was later named the Washington School.  It was ready for occupancy in September, 1875, and achieved nationwide attention for its size and for the facilities its thirty-eight rooms provided to Calumet students.  Among these was a high school assembly room and four recitation rooms, a laboratory, a museum and sizeable township library, which was accessible to teachers, students and the public alike.

High School classes were carried on in the Washington School until 1898, when a high school a a manual training school were built across the old Torch Lake Road from Washington School, on the site of the present high school, although these buildings were smaller than the present structures.  These two schools, devoted solely to high school education, represented an expansion of the curriculum and probable a considerable increase in enrollment at the high school level.  At this time and for some years to come, the Manual Training School was staffed by employees of the Calumet and Hecla Mining Company, and the two schools had separate principals, both responsible to the superintendent and the board of education. These buildings were short lived, however, being destroyed by fire soon after the opening of the school year, in September 1905.  The present high school building rose from the ashes, built (as were all the other schools on company property) by the Calumet and Hecla Mining Company.  The materials used in its construction reflected a determination to prevent a loss by fire ever again.  The new building was ready for occupancy in September, 1907, and still serves the needs of its students very adequately.


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