Listed on the National Register of Historic Places on January 31, 2005, the Laurium district encompasses roughly 2872 acres of industrial, social and architectural history. Founded in 1887, the Village of Laurium grew to satisfy the demand for housing that neither the nearby Village of Red Jacket or the Calumet & Hecla Mining Company could adequately supply. The village was a part of the development of the Calumet conglomerate lode, the most important development in U.S. copper mining in the mid-nineteenth century. It was home to mine workers and mine owners, but also doctors, shopkeepers, barbers, bakers and laundresses and all the others needed to sustain a community.

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