DOLLAR BAY

Region: Keweenaw Peninsula

Dollar Bay is also the home port for the Coast Guard's rescue boat, the watertight Portage. Built for the roughest Superior conditions, it will return rightside up if it capsizes.

Three miles east of the Lift Bridge, Dollar Bay is an unincorporated sawmill village off M-26, three miles east of the Lift Bridge. The shipping possibilities of Dollar Bay's waterfront location enabled the community to survive beyond its lumber town phase. Its main street begins at the corner to M-26 by Quincy's restaurant. Turn right after the park and you will eventually come to the COAST GUARD'S PORTAGE STATION on the Keweenaw Waterway, serving all of the Copper Country and Baraga County. It's near the yellow brick Dollar Bay-Tamarack Schools, one of 30 "outperforming schools" in Michigan.

Good luck trying to outrun the Coast Guard's response boat harbored at its Dollar Bay base. Used for law enforcement, it has two Honda 225 hp outboards and goes up to 70 mph.

Or go on a couple of blocks and turn right at Elm (the streets are named in alphabetical order) and look for the gray, two-sided building with red trim to see a North American remnant of Finn-Swedes. (Finland's Swedish-speaking minority was far better educated and wealthier than Finnish speakers in the 1800s.) Dollar Bay's Order of Runeberg Lodge #8 is named after Johan Ludvig Runeberg (1804-1877), considered the national poet of Finland, a Romantic akin to Keats. Writing in Swedish, the language of Finland's upper classes, Runeberg idealized the population of rural Finns, helping to lead the way to Finland's vote to adopt Finnish as its primary language. Still active, the International Order of Runeberg ("celebrating Finnish & Swedish-speaking Finnish Culture and Traditions") is not limited to Finn-Swedes, or to men, either. For local info and photos, see orderofruneberg.org/lodges/lodge8dollarbaymi.

Downtown's commerce consists of a bar and a beautician's, but if you turn left onto Helman, you'll soon come to HORNER FLOORING in Dollar Bay's historic big mill. Horner, maker of maple flooring (including some NBA basketball courts), is one of the area's largest industrial employers.

Known and respected nationally, Horner Flooring makes many of the country's NBA and college basketball courts. This is the rear view, showing the stacks of hardwood.

Continue on, and you'll be on an isthmus to the Dollar Peninsula, so named for its shape, not for Eastern U.P. lumberman Robert Dollar. A waterfront shed advertises minnows, leeches, smelt, knives, traps, and more; across the road turkeys strut in their shady pens. Half a mile to the right is Sandy Bottom Park, looking out across the Keweenaw Waterway. Beyond it, on Lower Point Mills Road and Grosse Point, are some of the area's most expensive homes, favored by Tech professors and others who want a shady, quiet waterfront setting that's close to Houghton.

The shipping possibilities of Dollar Bay's waterfront location enabled the community to survive past its lumber town phase. (—October, 2007)

Dollar Bay is also the home port for the Coast Guard's rescue boat, the watertight Portage. Built for the roughest Superior conditions, it will return rightside up if it capsizes.

Dollar Bay really turns out for the Fourth of July parade and BBQ. Check www.keweenaw.info for exact date and time.

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PLACES AROUND DOLLAR BAY TO

Eat Sleep Camp