Delaware is an

unincorporated community An unincorporated area is a region that is not governed by a local municipal corporation. Widespread unincorporated communities and areas are a distinguishing feature of the United States and Canada. Most other countries of the world either have ...

in Grant Township in

Keweenaw County Keweenaw County (, ; , ) is a county in the Upper Peninsula of the U.S. state of Michigan, the state's northernmost county. As of the 2020 United States Census, the population was 2,046, making it Michigan's least populous county. It is also the ...

in the

U.S. state In the United States, a state is a constituent political entity, of which there are 50. Bound together in a political union, each state holds governmental jurisdiction over a separate and defined geographic territory where it shares its sover ...

Michigan Michigan () is a state in the Great Lakes region of the upper Midwestern United States. With a population of nearly 10.12 million and an area of nearly , Michigan is the 10th-largest state by population, the 11th-largest by area, and the ...

. It was established in 1846 as a

copper mining Copper extraction refers to the methods used to obtain copper from its ores. The conversion of copper consists of a series of physical and electrochemical processes. Methods have evolved and vary with country depending on the ore source, loca ...

town. It is located in the

Keweenaw Peninsula The Keweenaw Peninsula ( , sometimes locally ) is the northernmost part of Michigan's Upper Peninsula. It projects into Lake Superior and was the site of the first copper boom in the United States, leading to its moniker of "Copper Country." As o ...

, ten miles south of Copper Harbor and around twenty five miles north of

Calumet Calumet may refer to: Places United States *Calumet Region, in northern Illinois and Indiana **Calumet River **Calumet Trail, Indiana ** Calumet (East Chicago) * Calumet, Colorado *Calumet, Iowa * Calumet, Michigan *Calumet, Minnesota * Calumet ...

. When the town was first settled it had a population of one hundred and rose to a population close to 1200 during full operation. When the town first started out the mining companies brought everything including housing, mining buildings,

schools A school is an educational institution designed to provide learning spaces and learning environments for the teaching of students under the direction of teachers. Most countries have systems of formal education, which is sometimes compulsor ...

grocery store A grocery store ( AE), grocery shop ( BE) or simply grocery is a store that primarily retails a general range of food products, which may be fresh or packaged. In everyday U.S. usage, however, "grocery store" is a synonym for supermarket, a ...

, and a

church Church may refer to: Religion * Church (building), a building for Christian religious activities * Church (congregation), a local congregation of a Christian denomination * Church service, a formalized period of Christian communal worship * C ...

. Today all that is left is a mining tour and foundations of old mining buildings. This is mostly because there were no other jobs and the location of the town is in a very remote location. The town made attempts to survive but in the end did not make it. The Bete Grise Light is located in the area. Delaware is recognized as the "Snow Capital of the Midwest". The Keweenaw County Road Commission maintains an unofficial record of snowfall at this location. The annual average, dating back to 1910, is around 240 inches. This is largely a result of

Lake-effect snow Lake-effect snow is produced during cooler atmospheric conditions when a cold air mass moves across long expanses of warmer lake water. The lower layer of air, heated up by the lake water, picks up water vapor from the lake and rises up through ...

. This average is the greatest of any location in the

Great Lakes The Great Lakes, also called the Great Lakes of North America, are a series of large interconnected freshwater lakes in the mid-east region of North America that connect to the Atlantic Ocean via the Saint Lawrence River. There are five lakes ...

snow belts The Snowbelt is the region near the Great Lakes in North America where heavy snowfall in the form of lake-effect snow is particularly common. Snowbelts are typically found downwind of the lakes, principally off the eastern and southern shores. ...

. For the entire U.S. east of the

Rocky Mountains The Rocky Mountains, also known as the Rockies, are a major mountain range and the largest mountain system in North America. The Rocky Mountains stretch in straight-line distance from the northernmost part of western Canada, to New Mexico in ...

, only select mountainous locations in

New England New England is a region comprising six states in the Northeastern United States: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. It is bordered by the state of New York to the west and by the Canadian provinces ...

receive more snow. In the winter of 1978–79, the Delaware station measured a record 390 inches of snow. Measurements are taken once per day at this station. Official

National Weather Service The National Weather Service (NWS) is an Government agency, agency of the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government that is tasked with providing weather forecasts, warnings of hazardous weather, and other weathe ...

stations measure snowfall every six hours. This procedural difference leads to systematic underestimation of snowfall at Delaware due to compaction of the new snow over the 24-hour period. Helping to illustrate this point,

Mount Bohemia Mount Bohemia is the 5th highest point in the Keweenaw Peninsula and the 52nd highest prominent peak in Michigan with an elevation of . Mount Bohemia is host to a ski resort bearing the same name located at the northernmost portion of the Keweena ...

, a ski resort in nearby

Lac La Belle, Michigan Lac La Belle ( ; French: "''Lake The Beautiful''") is a small unincorporated community in Keweenaw County in the U.S. state of Michigan. The town was originally the site of a stamping plant for the copper mines of the Keweenaw, specifically t ...

, reports an annual average of 273 inches.

References

*Monette, Clarence. ''Delaware Mine Michigan: Its History''. Calumet MI: Greenlee Printing, 1987. Unincorporated communities in Keweenaw County, Michigan Unincorporated communities in Michigan Populated places established in 1862 1862 establishments in Michigan {{KeweenawCountyMI-geo-stub