Copper Country Curling Club

About Copper Country Curling Club

Copper Country Curling Club: Natural Ice in a Historic Mining Drill Shop

The Copper Country Curling Club curls in one of the most distinctive buildings in American curling: the Drill Shop in Calumet, on Michigan’s Keweenaw Peninsula. Erected in the 1880s by the Calumet & Hecla Mining Company to make drills for the region’s copper mines, the building was converted for curling through a partnership of Calumet Township, the club and Keweenaw National Historical Park. Decorative metal drills in the warming room nod to its industrial past.

The club dates to the 1990s, beginning in Lake Linden before settling at the Drill Shop in 2005, when interest in the sport was rising after the 2002 Winter Olympics. Its ice is natural, with no refrigeration: the largely original building and deep Keweenaw winters do the work, giving the club two sheets and a season of roughly ten weeks.

Members meet for league games twice a week. Newcomers are introduced through learn-to-curl open houses and private bookings, with lessons of about two hours led by certified coaches, and the Drill Shop also hosts events such as weddings. Michigan Tech’s curling club has also used the ice for competition.