The Portage Lake Lift Bridge, the heaviest of its kind

If you spend any time in Houghton or Hancock, you’ll cross the big green bridge that links them — and it’s a genuine record-holder. The Portage Lake Lift Bridge, officially the Houghton-Hancock Bridge, is the heaviest and widest double-decked vertical-lift bridge in the world. The whole center span rises straight up between two towers to let boats through, like a giant elevator, rather than swinging open the way a drawbridge does.

It was built to do two jobs at once. When it opened in 1959 it carried cars on the upper deck (US-41 and M-26) and trains on the lower deck, stacked one above the other — that’s the “double-decked” part. The trains are long gone (the rail line was abandoned in the early 1980s), so today the upper deck handles all the road traffic, and in winter the lower deck is opened to snowmobiles. The middle can be raised partway for snowmobiles and all the way — about a hundred feet up — to let ships pass beneath.

What makes the bridge more than a curiosity is what it connects. The Keweenaw Waterway cuts clear across the peninsula here, slicing off the whole upper Keweenaw — “Copper Island” — from the mainland. This bridge is the only land route between the two. Everyone driving up to Calumet, Eagle Harbor, or Copper Harbor crosses it. Watching the span rise for a passing ship, with the twin towns on either bank, is one of the classic sights of the Copper Country.