Houghton sits on the Keweenaw Peninsula, a thumb of land that pokes into Lake Superior so far north that it feels like another country. Here the Portage Canal slices the peninsula in two, and the town and its twin, Hancock, face each other across the water, joined by a double-decked lift bridge whose road deck rises to let boats pass beneath. The twin hillside towns, with their brick storefronts and steep streets, look like an overgrown mining camp, and that is what they were.
Copper made the place. Long before Europeans arrived, Native people mined nuggets of pure copper from the rocks here, and in the 1840s a rush brought thousands of immigrants, Cornish, Finnish, Italian and many more, to dig the richest native copper deposits in the world. The mines ran for a century, and their head-frames and stone ruins still dot the hills. In Hancock, the Quincy Mine's great hoist house is open for tours, and you can ride a cog railway and go underground. The Cornish brought the pasty, a meat-and-vegetable turnover that is the local lunch, and the Finns left their saunas and their surnames.
Michigan Technological University, founded to train mining engineers, keeps the town young and gives it a few good coffee shops. Winter here is serious: the peninsula gets some of the heaviest snowfall in the eastern United States, often over two hundred inches in a season, and the banks beside the roads can stand taller than a car. So riding is a summer and early autumn affair. US 41 runs north from town to Copper Harbor at the tip, climbing and falling through hardwood forest, and Brockway Mountain Drive, a ridge road built in the 1930s, gives a huge view over the lake.
Houghton has fuel, supermarkets, diners and motels, and north of it services thin out, so top the tank here. Expect lake-effect fog and sudden chill, even in July, as Superior is cold enough to cool the whole peninsula. Early autumn is the best time, with crisp days and color arriving in late September, while black flies can be fierce in late spring. The great lake itself, with its rocky shore and agate-strewn beaches, is the real destination, and the cold, clear water is a pleasure to stand beside.