Fort Wilkins

Built in 1923. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1970.

From the record

“Fort Wilkins Historic State Park is a historic preservation and public recreation area operated by the Michigan Department of Natural Resources at Copper Harbor, Michigan. The park preserves the restored 1844 army military outpost, Fort Wilkins, which was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1970.”
Wikipedia article Fort Wilkins Historic State Park, CC BY-SA 4.0.

One of 31 National Register listings published here for Keweenaw County · listed in 1970 · category: District · built in 1923.

Sources: the Wikipedia article · the case file at the National Archives · the National Register database, National Park Service

The listing

Address. Fort Wilkins State Park, Copper Harbor, 49918
When was it listed? July 1970
Category. district
Township. Grant township
When was it built? 1923
National Register reference number. 70000279 - the number the National Park Service assigned this property when it was listed, and the key its nomination file is catalogued under at the National Archives.

Mines and quarries near this property

10 of 28 shown

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal mineral resources record lists 28 workings within 5 miles of Fort Wilkins: 18 past producers, 9 prospects, 1 occurrence. None of them still produces. What was taken out: Copper, Manganese. Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a quarry counted here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.

Site	Commodity	Status	Recorded
Clark Manganese Deposit	Manganese	Past Producer	1881
Aetna Copper Mine	Copper	Past Producer
Aetna Exploration Copper Mine	Copper	Past Producer	1864, 1867
Cape Mine	Copper	Past Producer	1854
Clark	Copper	Past Producer	1872, 1879
Girard Exploration	Copper	Prospect	1864, 1865
Hanover Mine	Copper	Past Producer	1852
Hays Mine (Pittsburgh & Boston)	Copper	Past Producer	Fissure Copper Veins
Lac La Belle Exploration	Copper	Past Producer	1850
New York and Michigan Exploration	Copper	Past Producer	1846, 1853

Every working recorded in Keweenaw County

Storms near this property

5 since 1994

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The National Weather Service names Copper Harbor, the town this property stands in, in 5 storm reports between 1994 and 2007: 3 thunderstorm wind, 1 hail, 1 tornado. No death or injury is recorded in these reports. Each account below is quoted exactly as the forecast office filed it, from the NOAA Storm Events Database, and each date opens the federal record of that event.

When	Event	Place named	Harm	What the report says
June 1994	Hail	Copper Harbor	$5,000	Hail damage reported to vehicle windshields and a metal roof of a store. Winds blew down trees and power lines between Eagle River and Copper Harbor.
June 1994	Thunderstorm Wind	Copper Harbor	$5,000	Hail damage reported to vehicle windshields and a metal roof of a store. Winds blew down trees and power lines between Eagle River and Copper Harbor.
July 2007	Thunderstorm Wind	Copper Harbor	$3,000	Many trees and branches downed along the highway.
August 2003	Tornado (F0)	Copper Harbor	-	A waterspout over Lake Superior moved onshore at Silver Island just off the shore from Eagle Harbor. The tornado knocked down a tree on the island before it dissipated.
June 2003	Thunderstorm Wind	Copper Harbor	-	Three trees were blown down.

Every storm recorded in Keweenaw County

Map coverage status

No historic map-sheet match is published for this property yet. That does not mean no map exists. This record needs a coordinate-quality review before it can be joined to a sheet boundary. Browse the county's mapped places while that work is pending.

Listed places nearby

4 within 8 miles

Other National Register properties close enough to walk or drive between, ordered by distance from this one. Both positions come from the same geocoding pass that matched these properties to their map sheets.

Property	Distance	Listed
Copper Harbor Light Station	0.4 miles	2012
US 41-Fanny Hooe Creek Bridge	0.5 miles	1999
Keweenaw Mountain Lodge and Golf Course Complex	2.1 miles	1980
Brockway Mountain Drive	5.6 miles	2017

Sources for this property

National Archives record	The nomination case file for reference 70000279 in Record Group 79.
Wikipedia article	Community-written account of this property, licensed CC BY-SA.
Keweenaw County	All 31 listed properties in this county.

Provenance

Listing record. National Park Service National Register of Historic Places, listed-properties dataset, current to 2026-05-22.
Map join. Address geocoded through the United States Census geocoder, then tested against the published boundary of every sheet in the USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection.
How this page is made. Listing fields come from federal records; map-sheet coverage is a labelled coordinate-to-boundary calculation, not a source-field claim.
Mines and quarries. USGS Mineral Resources Data System (MRDS) https://mrdata.usgs.gov/mrds/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105.
Storms. NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, Storm Events Database https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/stormevents/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105. Narratives are quoted verbatim from the National Weather Service report and are not edited or summarised.