Unattended Death and Biohazard Cleanup in Ahmeek, MI

Ahmeek is a village in Allouez Township in Keweenaw County, and it is the only incorporated municipality in the county - Michigan's least populous county.

At just 0.068 square miles (about 43 acres) of land, Ahmeek is the smallest municipality in Michigan by land area.

The name Ahmeek comes from the Ojibwe word "amik," meaning "beaver," because beavers were once abundant in the area.

The village was founded in 1904 by Joseph Bosch, the creator of the Bosch Brewing Company, and it was incorporated in 1909, the same year its post office opened with attorney James A. Hamilton as the first postmaster.

Ahmeek grew up around the Ahmeek Mine, where mining began around 1880 as an exploration branch of the Seneca Mining Company before the Ahmeek Mining Company became independent in 1903 to work the copper-rich Kearsarge Amygdaloid Lode.

The Ahmeek Mine was the most successful and productive mine along the Kearsarge lode, and its No. 3 and No. 4 shafts were among the most distinctive mining structures in Michigan's Copper Country.

The mine was absorbed by the Calumet and Hecla Mining Company in 1923, closed during the Great Depression in 1931, reopened in 1936, and shut down permanently around 1966.

During the Copper Country Strike of 1913-1914, Ahmeek was a flashpoint of violence - striking miners fired on a trainload of hired strikebreakers, and an Ahmeek Mine smokestack was dynamited.

Ahmeek's population peaked at 892 in the 1920 census, but the 2020 census counted just 127 residents; at the 2010 census, the village's 146 residents lived in 73 households.

The village's park, Gabriel J. Chopp Park, honors the man who retired in 1971 after 39 years as Ahmeek's postmaster - the longest-serving postmaster in the village's history.