Red Dust Oral History Collection

Between 1983 and 2000, middle school students at the former National Mine School in National Mine, Michigan, succeeded by students at Aspen Ridge Middle School in Ishpeming, Michigan, wrote and produced 17 books titled “Red Dust” as part of the Red Dust local history project. Maxine Honkala, Sharon Richards, and Bobbi Ameen directed the project. The students received national and state awards for their work, which they produced for National History Day.

The collection includes transcripts of around 800 of the interviews, audio recordings for 96 of the interviews, a few short video documentaries based on the interviews that were created by the students, and the final published books containing excerpts from the interviews.

See the full finding aid here.