Eagle River and Eagle Harbor, two jewels on the shore

The shore road M-26 runs along the Keweenaw’s Lake Superior side. It passes two of the prettiest little villages in the U.P. Both are barely more than a handful of buildings. But both are rich with history. Take Eagle River. Its year-round population is one you could count on your fingers and toes. Even so, it’s the county seat of Keweenaw County. The courthouse is here. It boomed in the 1840s, when the Cliff Mine just inland made it a busy copper port. Today it’s a quiet spot. There’s a waterfall and dam, a historic timber-arch bridge, and a general store that’s been going since the 1860s.

Seven miles up the road sits Eagle Harbor. It wraps around one of the only naturally protected harbors on this stretch of coast. Its red-brick lighthouse was built in 1871 and is now a maritime museum. It’s one of the most photographed on Lake Superior. The harbor also has a sandy swimming beach — a rarity on this rocky shore.

There’s a deeper story in these waters, too. It was just off this shore, near Eagle River, that Douglass Houghton drowned in October 1845. Houghton was Michigan’s first state geologist. His copper survey set off the rush that built everything you see in the Copper Country. This county’s neighbor, Houghton County, is named for him. He was caught in a sudden Lake Superior storm in a small open boat. He was lost at just thirty-six. His body wasn’t found until the next spring. The same lake that made the Keweenaw rich has always demanded its due. And these beautiful, dangerous waters took one of Michigan’s brightest early figures.