MARQUETTE, MI-- A group of volunteers is trying to save the world’s largest contiguous piece of glacial copper from being melted down.
June Rydholm is the widow of U.P. historian Fred Rydholm, who spearheaded the effort to save the 28.2-ton slab found in Calumet.
“Most of our float copper we hold in our hand, you know, they’re small pieces,” she says. “And this had broken off in the glacier as it moved many hundreds of years ago—maybe thousands of years ago.”
Rydholm says her husband found the copper’s owners, who were going to cut it into chunks and sell it off.
“And Fred talked to the men over and over again until he convinced them that it is a specimen that should be saved and preserved because it is so big and so unusual,” she says.
Fred Rydholm was able to persuade the owners to put the slab on display at Presque Isle Park in Marquette, where it has sat for the past couple of years.
The owners are now selling the chunk for $250,000. Rydholm says her group has raised just $50,000, and an initial deadline to have all the money passed at the end of July. The group now has an indefinite extension to come up with the full amount.
For information on how to pledge toward the project, go to marquettecountycommunityfoundationdotorg.
