 The workers were employed in a coal mine and also tended ovens that produced coke (fuel).In 1894, Calumet was the site of a bitter coal miners’ strike against the H. C. Frick Coke Company, which at that time was part-owner of Calumet Coke Company.The coke works closed in the 1920s, and the mine closed in the early 1930s during the Great Depression, causing enormous hardship for the community's workers.