Calumet is a census-designated place in Mount Pleasant Township, Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, United States.

The closing of the Calumet mine during the Great Depression caused enormous hardship in an era when unemployment compensation and welfare payments were nonexistent.

On the other hand, Norvelt was created during the depression by the US federal government as a model community, intended to increase the standard of living of laid-off coal miners.

The workers were employed in a coal mine and also tended ovens that produced coke (fuel).

During the bitter coal miners strike of 1894, a dozen deputy sheriffs, that were being paid by the H. C. Frick Coke Company at Calumet, while off duty, went swimming in the reservoir there.

By 1900 over 900 persons, the miners and their families, were living in the coal company patch town of Calumet, in Mt.

As late as 1930 the H. C. Frick Coke Company was still using eleven mules or horses for hauling coal in the Calumet Mine, in addition to a single steam locomotive, and two mine locomotives operated by compressed air.

Around 1932 the H. C. Frick Coke Company closed and abandoned the Calumet Mine and sent a number of the miners to the Standard Shaft Mine near Mount Pleasant, and laid off the rest of the coal miners to fend for themselves, with no compensation or means of support.