By DAN ROBLEE

Daily Houghton

Mining Gazette

JACOBSVILLE – Not many folks from out of town make it to Jacobsville, but the Jacobsville sandstone the village is built on is downright cosmopolitan.

From about 1880 to 1910, sandstone from Jacobsville quarries was used to build landmark buildings in New York, Chicago and throughout the nation, as well as locally, Michigan Tech University professor emeritus Bill Rose said.

“Big buildings, famous buildings,” said Rose, who led a group of nearly 20 inquiring adults on a daylong, by-land and by-sea exploration of the Jacobsville stone, from its geological beginnings as part of a pre-glacial Huron Mountain Range as tall as the Rockies, to the tall buildings of downtown Chicago. The group even got together with some of today’s Jacobsville residents, to chat about what that history and somewhat changed geography means to them.

It was the final day of a three-day geoheritage tour of the Keweenaw, one of a handful that have now been led by Rose and colleague Erika Vye, linking the rocks and minerals of the Copper Country with the history and culture built upon them. It’s a new twist on the old idea of educational tourism, a long-time area staple with the Keweenaw National Historical Park and mineral-focused attractions like the Quincy and Delaware mines.

It’s a concept that’s quickly gaining popularity. After a slower start last year, when the first tours were held, this year’s excursions sold out, Rose said.

That didn’t surprise Steve Trynoski, who splits his year between Bete Gris and St. Paul, Minn.

“There’s a crying need, a demand for adult education,” Trynoski said, noting that the majority of the tour members were retirees with challenging careers behind them and a desire to learn more about the world.

“People need to be challenged intellectually,” he said.

“I think it just opens your eyes, broadens your horizons,” Hancock resident Sue Ellen Kingsley said. “There’s a lot I don’t know about geology. I wanted to learn more.”

She said Rose did a great job explaining human impacts on the Keweenaw’s geologic and overall environment, and the tour also gave her an up-close look at Rabbit Island, a secluded spot she’d been curious about.

Rose said the geoheritage project’s partnership with MTU has been a boon. Tech hosts his geoheritage web site – geo.mtu.edu/KeweenawGeoheritage – and allows the project to charter Tech’s 20-person research vessel, the Agassiz, for the tours.

Along with Rabbit Island, the aquatic itinerary included Big and Little Traverse bays, Rabbit Bay and one of the larger quarries cut along from the Keweenaw coast.

Not only does geoheritage have a good chance to carve out a larger niche in the Keweenaw’s tourism market, Rose said it and other educational tourism activities provide great opportunities to teach people about issues like mining, dealing with waste and finding the most logical energy sources – issues where many people have opinions, but often poor information to base them on.

“It can depolarize people so they’re not adamantly opposed to every kind of mining, or not so pro-mining they won’t listen to an environmentalist’s opinion,” he said. “Neither of those points of view are good for us. It’s better to know what’s real.”

Laurium resident Barb Flanagan was learning plenty at Bare Butt Beach, one of Jacobsville’s best up-close examples of sandstone geology. But while senior citizen Georgia Makens was indulging the pleasure of rocking back and forth on a balanced sandstone rock, she too indulged in a simpler geologic pleasure, collecting a few of the more striking rocks to bring home.

“It’s hard not to (collect),” she said. “Every beach has something new. I couldn’t resist.”