Touring and residential companies bring the best of the world’s drama, music and comedy to stages around the lake, but Lake Superior has attracted top talent to its shores for more than 140 years.

Once the pioneering shipping and logging industries traced routes into the Lake Superior basin in the early 1800s, families began arriving and the personality of the region changed. Where wild saloons and bawdy houses dominated infrequent boom towns, family folk demanded a more genteel and uplifting lifestyle and were soon building churches, schools and meeting houses.

The roof might barely cover a building before it became the site of locally produced entertainment. Talent shows, dances and socials, religious pageants and revivals, school programs, dramatic productions or concerts by amateur actors and musicians, as well as lectures by residents who were widely traveled or had expertise on a topic, were all entertaining for the culturally isolated populous.

An exciting bill of fare invited patrons to Firemen’s Hall in Ontonagon, Michigan. This play bill from 1880 shows that elaborate programs were often initiated to keep the home fires burning. [CLICK TO ENLARGE, THEN "BACK"]

The 1844 discovery of iron ore near Marquette, Michigan, led to a rush of activity there and the presence of copper in the Keweenaw area of Upper Michigan began to attract serious investment and development of mines in the 1850s. As workers pushed shafts into the rich deposits, mining camps sprang up next door.

Occasional wandering troupes began to find their way to these scattered communities, as Henry Hobart, a school teacher at Clifton, recorded in his diary. In 1863, he jots derisively that a “miserable, silly” black minstrel show came to town and performed at Clifton Hall to the delight of the miners, who gave “their quarters to witness the foolish actions.” By that point, Clifton, one of 18 copper mining locations around Eagle Harbor, Michigan, was a regular stop for performers and Hobart notes with approval the appearance in 1864 of a Mr. Bardwell with a collection of Civil War photographs and a female singer of patriotic songs. Hobart also attended a sleight of hand performance that summer and recorded celebrations for Christmas, St. Patrick’s Day and the Fourth of July, each accompanied by musical and oratorical presentations.

The oldest and most easily reached settlements on Lake Superior, the twin Sault Ste. Maries saw constant increase in the commerce on the St. Marys River, even before the opening of the Sault Lock in 1855. Here, as elsewhere, churches, halls and schools served as the first performing arts spaces, but it is a bit surprising that the records reveal it was not until 1901 that the Canadian Theatre was completed by Albert Search, advertising a variety of activities for public entertainment. By 1910, when that theater changed its name to the Canadian Opera House, it had been joined by no less than four other venues offering everything from farcical burlesque to grand opera, but especially focusing on melodrama - a favorite on all Lake Superior stages.

Although none of 18 or more historic establishments in the Sault area is operating today as a theater or opera house, several have been converted to other uses and still exist. The municipally owned Sault Community Theatre Centre now serves as the primary stage for live performers on the Ontario side and facilities at Lake Superior State University are often used in Michigan’s Soo.

Early programs outlined elaborate productions, as shown in these pages and the advertisement for the Bijou Family Theatre from Ontonagon, Michigan. However, Howe's Great London Shows were much too large for the stage, instead reserving their productions for the tent. [CLICK TO ENLARGE, THEN "BACK"]

The rapid development of an intercontinental rail system in the mid-1880s made relatively easy travel for migratory groups of entertainers, who frequently numbered upwards of three dozen performers. As rail transportation became more reliable, more and more touring companies found their way here and the level of professionalism improved markedly. Some troupes, like the popular Flora De Voss Stock Company, developed a circuit of regularly scheduled appearances at a number of Lake Superior communities.

As public interest developed, construction of local, often lavish opera houses or theaters was undertaken in the latter 1800s and early 1900s. It mattered not if these buildings were built by community groups or by private entrepreneurs, the fact of their existence lent credibility to a community and brought relief from daily drudgery with professional opera, drama, vaudeville, concerts, dance and lyceum programs by touring companies.

By the early 1860s, Michigan’s Houghton and Hancock listed no less than five privately owned halls (usually associated with hotels) designed to house diverse social functions, including dinner-dances, music and masquerades - testifying to the appetite for diversion in the Copper Country. Indeed, so voracious was that appetite that records indicate there were at least 21 theaters operating in Copper Country communities prior to 1910.

The Light Guard Armory, founded by veterans after the Civil War in Houghton, was an early entertainment center before it finally fell into disrepair. By that time, the Kerredge Opera House in Hancock had become the primary stage for performances in the twin cities during the late 1800s and early part of this century.

Opera, stage shows and other performing arts were the ostensible reasons for the opera house at Lake Linden, southeast of Calumet/Laurium, but a historian with the Houghton County Historical Society says that when a drama or opera ended, promoters often rushed in to set up a “squared circle,” because boxing was the favorite form of entertainment in that opera house.

Houghton had plans to build its own auditorium in the latter 1800s, but an agreement between the twin cities not to build duplicating facilities protected the Kerredge as the center for performing arts. However, the Coliseum in Houghton was preferred for athletic contests, so the opera house was probably not as commonly used as a site for boxing and wrestling matches as was the opera house in Lake Linden.

In Ontonagon, Michigan, records show regular, sometimes elaborate entertainment events in the Firemen’s Hall from at least 1880. By the first decade of the 1900s the Hawley Opera House was open and featuring programs that included lectures, dramas, comedy and music.

The ornate Red Jacket Town Hall and Opera House was not commissioned by the village council of Red Jacket (now Calumet) until 1898 and opened in 1900. The 1,200-seat opera house was billed as the finest north of the Straits of Mackinac and booked more than 800 events in its first decade. This beautiful theater has been restored and serves as a site for a variety of entertainment through the year.

Not to be outdone by the Copper Country, Marquette was a well established city and iron mining center by the late 1860s. Fortunes were poured into the construction of luxurious homes and business places. In his history of Pickands Mather & Co. entitled Vein of Iron,Walter Havighurst notes winter attendance by residents in the 1870s at “programs in Mathers’ Hall, lectures on geology, history and Indian legends, concerts by the Marquette Vocal Society and Swedish Quartette.”

By the early 1900s, Marquette Opera House was well established. Liberty Hall was dedicated in 1912 and many plays with socialist themes found enthusiastic audiences of Finns, many of whom espoused socialism or communism as the way to a better life. A number of these Finnish halls also served as entertainment centers in smaller towns around the lake during the early 1900s.

An interesting footnote in Marquette entertainment is that the Delft Theatre, an early movie house in the city, shot its own film footage and showed silent newsreels of local events as part of its entertainment mix. Jack Deo, owner of the Superior View Studio next door to the Delft on West Washington Avenue, has resurrected many of these early film clips and offers customers two hour-long videotapes from the Marquette area and another from the Delft Theatre in Escanaba.

The Lyceum Theatre of Thunder Bay was completed in 1909, existing today as a building housing several businesses.

In Duluth, Minnesota, an early stage venue was the Grand Opera House, which opened at Fourth Avenue West and Superior Street in 1883 and is credited as being the city’s most elegant building of the time. Hosting the finest dramatic troupes and performers of the day, it was destroyed by fire in 1889. In 1891, the Lyceum Theater opened a block up Superior Street at Fifth Avenue West. Featuring one of the largest stages in America and seating for 1,500, it attracted top talent from around the world. The Lyceum was also a partner in and housed Duluth’s first radio station, WJAP. The building was razed in the early 1960s to make way for an urban renewal project.

The Pavilion, a 100-by-300-foot wooden structure at the top of Duluth’s Incline Railroad line, became a cultural and entertainment headquarters when it opened in 1892. With dining and dancing halls and a 1,600 seat auditorium, it offered a wide range of theatrical and vaudeville companies over the next decade.

The Duluth Playhouse, which claims title as the oldest continuing community theater in the United States, was formed in 1914 and has performed in several locations, but now makes its home in the Depot. Touring companies use the Duluth Entertainment Convention Center for their productions.

Across St. Louis Bay, Barry Singer of the Superior, Wisconsin, Public Library points out that W.C. Fields and the Marx Brothers, among others, visited area stages early in their vaudeville careers and that Judy Garland’s parents met during a stage production in Superior and married there, before moving to Grand Rapids, Minnesota, where their famous daughter was born.

Barry identifies seven notable stage operations prior to 1900. The earliest was the East End Music Hall, which opened March 5, 1884, as an all-around venue for performing artists. The People’s Theater, sometimes known as the West Superior Opera House, opened in 1886 and the Star Theater in 1887.

The year of 1889 was busy on the Superior theater scene, as the Bijou and Duchess theaters and the Academy of Music all opened that year. The latter, located on Banks Street, was renamed the Gem Theater in 1897.

In 1890, the Grand Opera House opened on Belknap Avenue, attracting topline opera, drama, vaudeville and family burlesque, touring companies and other entertainment acts. The building was destroyed by fire in 1938. Another notable facility was the 1893 Lyceum Concert Hall.

By the mid-1880s, the Gogebic Iron Range had stirred the imagination and investment of iron firms and the Michigan cities of Bessemer, Wakefield, Ironwood and other mining settlements were beginning to take their place beside the established lumbering center of Hurley, Wisconsin. But, although the Ironwood Theatre is one of Lake Superior’s more famous restorations of a large theater facility, it in fact postdates the period of live performances. Built as a movie theater in 1928, it was one of the largest and most decorative facilities of its day. This beautifully restored theater is the site of a variety of entertainment and is home to the Gogebic Players.

By 1885, when the Milwaukee, Lake Shore and Western Railroad pushed its way from the Gogebic mines into Ashland, Wisconsin, travelers from that city could entrain on three different rail lines to destinations in any direction except north. The promise of the city as a major shipping center was fulfilled when Gogebic iron ore was added to tonnages of brownstone and lumber being shipped from ports on Chequamegon Bay.

Perhaps the most popular name for theaters prior to 1900 was the Grand Opera House. The Ashland, Wisconsin, version advertised two upcoming shows in 1905. [CLICK TO ENLARGE, THEN "BACK"]

In Ashland, Avis Olson of the Historical Society identifies the earliest record of an established stage as the Ashland Theatre. That venue opened in the mid-1880s on West Second Avenue and had seating for 1,700. The Grand Opera House, located on Third Avenue West, was a notable entertainment facility that had its most successful period between 1895 and 1910, hosting 14 different shows in 1903 alone. By 1911, the Glen, the Bijou and the Majestic theaters, all on West Second Avenue, had joined the Grand and were presenting quality programs on a regular basis. The Chequamegon Theatre Association also shows up early in the history of the city and remains today as a drama troupe presenting a number of programs each year.

Businessmen John Overby and Andrew Aune built the Washburn (Wisconsin) Opera House in 1888 as the second story of a building on Bayfield Street that housed a saloon and grocery store on the street level. The Opera House was used not only by the touring Flora De Voss theater troupe, but for high school sports, commencement, dances and any other event requiring a large space.

Interestingly, Bayfield, Wisconsin’s renowned Lake Superior Big Top Chautauqua may have had a predecessor, since the Bayfield Chautauqua advertises a Treble Clef Club presentation by “charming and cultivated young ladies who give high class programs of vocal quartets, solos, duets and trios, costumed readings, scenes from operas, in costume, numerous sketches, etc.,” in the June 30, 1916, Ashland Daily Press.

In the days when Thunder Bay, Ontario, was two cities, the entertainment scene was as competitive as everything else seems to have been between Port Arthur and Fort William. Irregular performances of drama began as early as 1879 at the Lakehead.

The cities themselves provided the first venues for entertainment, as the Fort William Auditorium in the Town Hall on Donald Street and Port Arthur Town Hall Opera House at the corner of Court and Arthur Streets hosted traveling shows as early as the 1880s. By 1905, amateur and professional companies were offering the public a different program every month. In the first decade of the 1900s, private investors entered the entertainment scene with a number of new theater venues like the Bijoux and the Lyceum, the facade of which still proudly proclaims itself on Cumberland Street. Competition between these businesses, and the two cities, heated up. Indeed, in a paper for the Thunder Bay Historical Society, Mark Chochla documents that a “Twin Cities Theatrical War” to determine which city was culturally superior was won by Port Arthur when the Bijoux Theatre managed to sign the Allen Players Company and its star, Vera Fenton, who was billed as the most “accomplished actress ever to visit the North Shore.”

A note of interest is that the accomplished and respected Allen troupe was vacationing at Silver Islet and rehearsing new material aimed at “captivating San Francisco” when the offer was made. Apparently, Bijoux manager Walter Brooks was able to proffer a sufficient cash incentive to entice Miss Fenton to give up her fishing and try out her new material on the Port Arthur audience.

But, even though Port Arthur won the “theatrical war,” Fort William Auditorium’s more commodious stage was used three weeks later to premier the Allen Players’ lavish production of “Caprice.” And it was that venue that attracted most of the name entertainment, including Canada’s most famous operatic soprano, Madame Albani, who performed there in 1906. Despite her admission that she “had seen better days,” the 58-year-old star pleased a capacity crowd in “arctic-like” temperatures in the hall.

By the second decade of the 1900s, Canadian audiences were demanding less “American” influence in their productions and several circuits with British and Canadian influences were established, but the effort died during World War I, as movies became the preferred medium of entertainment, delivering the coup de grace to most vaudeville, theatrical companies and other touring companies.

Today, Thunder Bay Community Auditorium is the primary stage for touring productions and Magnus Theatre presents local productions in their theater on McLaughlin Street.

The historic Calumet (Michigan) Theater is one of several in the lake region to have survived in great style, experiencing renovation and an active schedule of performances.

At Schreiber, Ontario, a railroad community established in 1885, local troupes of entertainers produced performances at the Old Town Hall, which was razed several years ago. Occasional migrant troupes would also use that stage. Given a sizable population of Italians in the community, any operatic presentations that happened to stop in town were especially appreciated.

During the late 1940s’ resurrection of the former boomtown of Peninsula into a company town for Marathon Paper Co., entertainment was first confined to the stage of the Marathon, Ontario, Recreation Hall, but that venue was later joined by the Strand Theatre, a movie house which had a stage that was used for live performances. The Everest Hotel was another scene of occasional live shows. Of late, live entertainers have used the stages at either Margaret Twomey Public School or the Marathon High School.

The “golden age” of live performances between 1890 and World War I was matched by investment in facilities to house those performances. Auditoriums with more than 1,000 seats became nearly commonplace in the first decade of this century and attracted international luminaries like Jennie Lind and tenor Enrico Caruso. Performances by local talent continued (and do right to the present), but culture mavens could point to appearances by major performers as a source of civic pride. Through the years, memories were embroidered from these productions and people in the mining camps and fledgling cities felt they were part of the culture of the world. Little wonder that these stages developed loyalty that was out of all proportion to any actual improvement in the day-to-day standard of living.

Little wonder, either, that those feelings for the opera house or theater would lead to major efforts to maintain or rejuvenate them as they fell into disrepair when television erased the profitability that stage and cinematic presentations once brought.

In the Lake Superior region, a number of these buildings like the Ironwood and Calumet theaters have been restored to their former glory, while others have gone on to less glamorous careers as business locations. In some cases, like that of the Norshor Theatre in Duluth, restoration efforts are either under way or have proven to be prohibitively exhausting and expensive to those who have undertaken them.