Under the guidance of Senior Instructor David Woodward, students taking HIST 3096 (Field Experience in Public History: Archaeology) were looking for traces of the Northland’s industrial boom years in this Twin Ports neighborhood. The skills they learned here are setting them up for success in a rapidly growing archaeology job market. 

In the early 1910s, U.S. Steel essentially built the entire town of Morgan Park from scratch. This area was marketed as a “workers’ utopia” equipped with churches, schools, and stores all built by U.S. Steel. But this generosity came with a catch: total corporate paternalism. 

The density of these social relationships meant that speaking out against working conditions or attempting to unionize could mean exile from your church community, losing your children’s place in school, or even eviction. The intentionally blurred line between work life and personal life forced workers into either total compliance or quiet rebellion. 

In 1913, the area studied by Woodward’s students served as the central drop-off point for raw materials — the place where lumber, steel, and stone were processed, and where temporary crews lived while building the company town from the ground up.

Students used basic techniques of archaeological data collection such as mapping, and ground penetrating radar to excavate the property. While doing so, they found evidence of the workers' lives like buttons, broken plates, and as anticipated, a lot of building debris. 

Beyond their field school experience, these students are gaining the practical skills necessary to excel in the field. With degrees in Public History, History, Anthropology, Environment, Sustainability, and Geography (ESG), and Geographic Information Systems (GIS), they are prepared to enter the workforce immediately as field archaeologists or technicians. 

This is a critical time for such education as researchers predict that the Cultural Resource Management (CRM) industry is poised for significant expansion, with over 8,000 new archaeological positions projected to open by 2031 due to infrastructure growth and regulatory requirements.