HANCOCK

Region: Keweenaw Peninsula

Click to enlarge

Once you cross the bridge to Hancock from Houghton, it's a short but twisty path as you follow U.S. 41 to reach Hancock's main shopping street, Quincy, a one-way street heading west.
Hancock was first settled in the 1860s. It grew large and prosperous with the Quincy Mining Company just up Quincy Hill. Quincy was nicknamed "Old Reliable" for the steady dividend checks paid to its fortunate stockholders.

Quincy Street (US-41) heads one-way west before veering north to the tip of the Keweenaw Peninsula. Nestled in this row of buildings is the city's handsome sandstone city hall. A favorite downtown destination: the Shottle Bop Party Store and its good $1 cigars.

Hancock's siting on such a steep hillside did not prove ideal. Its north-south streets are a challenge in winter. Originally half a dozen large natural gullies made deep vertical cuts in the hillside. Laboriously the gullies were filled in, creating today's streets of Ravine, Tezcuco, and Montezuma. (The two latter names recall Mexican mining.)

DonHunt

This photo doesn't do justice to the flamboyant beauty of the grounds of this McKinley St. hillside home. What's more, this Quincy Hill spot has a spectacular view across the Waterway (see below).

Throughout the 20th century and today Hancock has been the most Finnish city in America. Now about 40% of its residents are of Finnish heritage. It was named after the famous colonial-era American, John Hancock, president of the Continental Congress in at the time of the American Revolution. (He was the richest man to sign the constitution, with the biggest signature. Less well remembered and retold is the source of his and his family's wealth: smuggling.)

Edward Steichen, the influential American photographer, grew up in Hancock. Mary Chase Perry Stratton, founder of Detroit's illustrious Pewabic Pottery, lived here until the age of 10. Her childhood home at 222 Hancock (the lower street in the one-way pair that whisks traffic through town) is thought to be Hancock's oldest building.

Although Houghton, the county seat, is now larger, for a long time Hancock was bigger. In 1930 Hancock's population was 5,800, compared with Houghton's 3,800. But Houghton, with its state university, has grown in recent decades while Hancock has shrunk with the collapse of mining and the aging of its once fertile population.

Don Hunt

Here's the vista on Quincy Hill from the porch of the house pictured above.

The Quincy Mining Company just above Hancock was started in 1848 by Boston-based investors and closed in 1945. It had the deepest mineshaft in America, 9,100 feet. In 1913, near its peak, "the Quincy" employed 1,483. The first part of the big Quincy Smelter on the Portage Waterway in Ripley, just east of Hancock, was erected in 1861. Its ruins remain a local landmark which the Keweenaw National Historic Park hopes to turn into a visitor center.

The beautiful old houses just east of the lift bridge in East Hancock were built by mining officials and prosperous businessmen. Most all of Hancock's and Houghton's larger buildings from 1900 and earlier make good use of reddish sandstone (commonly called brownstone) from quarries at nearby Jacobsville at the eastern entrance to the Keweenaw Waterway, 20 miles away.

In the late 19th century, increasingly depressed rural conditions in Finland coincided with an acute need for workers in the expanding Keweenaw copper mines. Mining companies sent agents to Scandinavia to recruit. So many Finns came to the Upper Peninsula that they became the region's largest ethnic group. Without previous mining experience, Finns had the mines' most menial and dangerous jobs. By 1910 Hancock had attracted so many Finnish mine workers that it had gained an overwhelmingly Finnish character, which it retains today.

The visual flavor of Hancock and the Quincy Mine circa 1900 can be seen at the "historic photo gallery" under the history section near the bottom of the city's useful, information-packed site, www.cityofhancock.com .

Return to Keweenaw Peninsula

PLACES AROUND HANCOCK TO

Eat Sleep Camp