Wednesday, February 17, 2010

48/365 - H is for Houghton (and Hancock too!)

A hillside cityscape, with a bridge in the foreground.
Click the photo to see it on Flickr.

H is for Houghton, which I call my Home. It's also for Hancock, our sister city across the river. Here's Houghton's hillside, and the H-like lift bridge crossing the Portage Canal. Both Houghton and Hancock are built on steep hillsides, leading down to the Portage Canal -- which was once a very important water route for ships, picking up copper and dropping off supplies for the local mines.

We are, as you may notice, a bit of a snowy land. This winter has been a bit disappointing -- only 150 inches so far. That's ok -- we still have at least two full months of winter left before spring really starts. We'll make it up!

This photo was taken from an old rock pile, made by the Quincy Mine up on the hill above Hancock, on a beautiful and sunny day -- one of the few we've had recently.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

is the Portage Canal / Waterway completely natural or did man do some digging / dredging ???

what is the land north of the Portage Canal / Waterway called ??? is it still the Keeweenaw Peninsula ???

DC said...

@Anon: The north end of the waterway was dredged in the mid 1800's (it was a small stream and swamp until then). Nowadays, it connects Lake Superior to itself, all the way across the peninsula.

The land north is the Keweenaw Peninsula, sometimes called Copper Island.