Calumet is a former mining town founded in 1904, near the portal of the Calumet Coal Mine complex (also known as a "colliery" in England). Calumet is now a ghost town in Huerfano County, Colorado, United States, northwest of Walsenburg.[1] One of the mines, Calumet No. 2, was briefly owned by Henry J. Kaiser and maintained by Kaiser Steel[2] between 1924 and 1971. Although small even for an underground coal mine, in 1961, the Calumet Mine was the county's leading producer.[3] The hamlet never did grow large enough to have its own post office and was abandoned by the 1970s.
A fictionalized version of Calumet, Colorado, not as a tiny ghost town but as a fairly vibrant community with a substantial population, was depicted in the 1984 war film, Red Dawn. Calumet is the movie's central setting. This created town of Calumet was chosen to be the film's central location so that it could be related to almost anywhere in the US, an ambiguous American township with deliberately vague landmarks and names. Red Dawn was actually filmed in the town of Las Vegas, New Mexico, the "stand-in" for the fictionalized version of Calumet.[4]
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