A few workers from Hebbard Lumber and Stone Company established a small lumbering community on the protected east shore of the Keweenaw Peninsula in the early 1880s, but as local lumber milling diminished, the settlement nearly faded by 1898. Its character changed when Mohawk Mining Company chose the site for a copper-ore stamping mill, taking advantage of a nearby railroad and dock, and by 1901 it was building a stamp mill, support structures, and houses for employees and their families. To serve the growing number of families, the company built a frame schoolhouse in 1902 with a school on the ground level and a meeting hall on the second level. The community reached near its peak in 1906 with 1,500 people, 117 houses, churches, businesses, the schoolhouse, and two stamp mills, and the town took the surname of Joseph E. Gay, president of the Mohawk Mining and Wolverine Copper Mining Companies. Improvements including hardwood floors, a ventilation system, indoor plumbing, electricity, and an outdoor play yard made the schoolhouse one of the best in the region, but overcrowding led to a two-story addition in 1927 that expanded it to six classrooms for 250 pupils in first through tenth grades. After the copper mills closed in 1932, families moved away, and by 1959 only 25 children remained in eight grades in one classroom before the school closed in 1961. A later private owner removed many original features before the property passed to Sherman Township for back taxes in the 1980s, after which the building became derelict. In 2007, the Keweenaw County Historical Society bought the school and part of the schoolyard for $10,000, began a seven-year restoration plan, raised funds through MusicFest and a silent auction, and opened restored spaces to visitors. Today the building contains an authentic classroom setting, meeting and library space, a museum room with displays from the local Catholic church, and a loom-room that reflects the Gay Fire Department Auxiliary, organized in 1971, whose rag-rug work supported the fire department and renovation of the Community Hall across the street.