Official Trailer 

Winona, Michigan, a former copper mining town 33 miles south of Houghton, is fast becoming a “ghost town.” The town’s population has shrunk from an estimated 1,000+ in 1920 to perhaps 13 residents today. Noted documentary filmmaker and sociologist, Dr. Michael Loukinen, has created this beautiful, fascinating and elegiac film documenting the community’s history and demise.

This film captures the ethereal mood of walking through the remains of Winona. Cracked foundations of once huge mining buildings will take you back to an earlier time. Weeds and trees flourish where hundreds of men mined and stamped copper ore. The ghost town atmosphere is overwhelming; one can almost hear the miners, trains, children playing and the immigrants speaking ancestral languages.

The film also paints a complete historical landscape of the community, from its humble beginnings to the boom and bust days so typical of mining towns in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. A lurking sense of anxiety sometimes exists in “Winonans” acing the inevitable loss of the memory of their community. Since 1920 when the mine closed, Winona has been a community of the marginalized; those left behind. However, nature has returned to claim the land that had long been altered by mining, logging, and development.

This film was released in 2016 and is 56 minutes long. 

Add the DVD to your cart here or watch it online. Online viewing options are below.