Skip to main content

Portage Lake Lift Bridge

Image
By

During my visit to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, I had the opportunity to see the Portage Lake Lift Bridge, or the Houghton-Hancock Bridge as it is officially known. The Portage Lake Lift Bridge is the world's heaviest vertical lift bridge and carries the highways US 41 and M-26 across the bridge. The bridge connects the cities of Houghton and Hancock over the Portage Lake section of the Keweenaw Waterway, but more broadly, it is the one bridge that connects the communities of the beautiful Keweenaw Peninsula with the rest of the Midwest.

Replacing a swing bridge that was built in 1905, the 1,310 foot long Portage Lake Lift Bridge opened to automobile traffic at the tail end of 1959 and was not officially completed until 1960. When the bridge was officially completed and dedicated, it was with much fanfare, but with some technical difficulties as well. While there were marching bands and jets that flew overhead during the grand opening, but telephone service was cut the day before to over 1000 customers in Hancock due to a ship having dropped anchor on underwater telephone cables a quarter mile away from the bridge the night before.

The vertical lift bridge generally works as intended with little problems, but in 1989, a wedding party  was trapped atop the lift span. A former bridge operator and his new bride decided to get married on the raised bridge, but a broken hydraulic line stranded them there for a few hours. Talk about a way to start a marriage.

The bridge design had to accommodate automobile traffic, but railroad and ship traffic also had to be considered, due to its proximity to both Lake Superior and nearby copper mines. As a result, the vertical lift design was deemed the most appropriate design for this bridge. Suspended between two towers, the entire main span of the bridge can rise vertically between them to provide 100 feet of clearance for ships. As long as the towers were built high enough, a vertical lift bridge accommodates just about any size ship that needs to pass beneath it. From the beginning, bridge planners stressed the importance on minimizing interruption of traffic flow across the bridge. That problem was solved by designing a railroad deck that could also accommodate motor vehicles. When raised to the highway level, the railroad deck allowed automobile traffic to continue across the bridge while small and medium sized boat traffic passed underneath, thus adequately addressing the traffic flow issue.

While the last train crossed the Portage Lake Lift Bridge in the summer of 1982, which officially ended over one hundred years of railroad service across the channel, the double deck design is still used in various ways. The vertical lift span sits in its intermediate level during the spring, summer and fall months, allowing small and medium boat access to either side of the bridge. As a result, automobile traffic crosses on the railroad deck. In the winter, the bridge is lowered and made accessible to snowmobiles and skiers, while automobiles cross on the upper deck. This is great for the snowmobile riders and cross country skiers, especially considering the heavy lake effect snow that the Keweenaw Peninsula receives each winter. Big freighters do pass under the bridge, but rarely do they three or four a year. That number has slowly declined over the years, considering that during the first three days of November 1961, 22 bulk carriers went through the lift bridge.

Today, the Portage Lake Lift Bridge is a centerpiece between the two communities of Houghton and Hancock, as well as the Keweenaw Peninsula at large. With the downtowns of the two cities being so close, the bridge is a lifeline for the people who live, work and visit the area. I think that it makes for a nice scenic view of the Keweenaw Waterway and I look forward to the opportunity to cross that bridge again someday.

Driving across the Portage Lake Lift Bridge north into Hancock.

The intermediate deck has a 14 foot clearance for motor vehicles.

A view of the Portage Lake Lift Bridge from Houghton.

Sources and Links:
Michigan Tech - Lift Bridge - Streaming Webcam
Michigan Department of Transportation - US-41 / Portage Lake
Bridgehunter - Houghton-Hancock Bridge
City of Hancock - Portage Lake Bridge History
Lost in Michigan - Houghton Hancock Lift Bridge
Lake Superior Magazine - The Changing Role of the Portage Lake Lift Bridge


How to Get There:
Labels:
Location: Portage Canal Lift Bridge, Michigan, USA

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Paper Highways: The Unbuilt New Orleans Bypass (Proposed I-410)

By
  There are many examples around the United States of proposed freeway corridors in urban areas that never saw the light of day for one reason or another. They all fall somewhere in between the little-known and the infamous and from the mundane to the spectacular. One of the more obscure and interesting examples of such a project is the short-lived idea to construct a southern beltway for the New Orleans metropolitan area in the 1960s and 70s. Greater New Orleans and its surrounding area grew rapidly in the years after World War II, as suburban sprawl encroached on the historically rural downriver parishes around the city. In response to the development of the region’s Westbank and the emergence of communities in St. Charles and St. John the Baptist Parishes as viable suburban communities during this period, regional planners began to consider concepts for new infrastructure projects to serve this growing population.  The idea for a circular freeway around the southern perimeter of t
Post a Comment
Read more

Hernando de Soto Bridge (Memphis, TN)

By
The newest of the bridges that span the lower Mississippi River at Memphis, the Hernando de Soto Bridge was completed in 1973 and carries Interstate 40 between downtown Memphis and West Memphis, AR. The bridge’s signature M-shaped superstructure makes it an instantly recognizable landmark in the city and one of the most visually unique bridges on the Mississippi River. As early as 1953, Memphis city planners recommended the construction of a second highway bridge across the Mississippi River to connect the city with West Memphis, AR. The Memphis & Arkansas Bridge had been completed only four years earlier a couple miles downriver from downtown, however it was expected that long-term growth in the metro area would warrant the construction of an additional bridge, the fourth crossing of the Mississippi River to be built at Memphis, in the not-too-distant future. Unlike the previous three Mississippi River bridges to be built the city, the location chosen for this bridge was about two
1 comment
Read more

Huey P. Long Bridge (New Orleans, LA)

By
Located on the lower Mississippi River a few miles west of New Orleans, the Huey P. Long Bridge is an enormous steel truss bridge that carries both road and rail traffic on an old-time structure that is a fascinating example of a bridge that has evolved in recent years to meet the traffic and safety demands of modern times. While officially located in suburban Jefferson Parish near the unincorporated community of Bridge City, this bridge’s location is most often associated with New Orleans, given that it’s the largest and most recognizable incorporated population center in the nearby vicinity. For this reason, this blog article considers the bridge’s location to be in New Orleans, even though this isn’t 100% geographically correct. Completed in 1935 as the first bridge across the Mississippi River in Louisiana and the first to be built in the New Orleans area, this bridge is one of two bridges on the Mississippi named for Huey P. Long, a Louisiana politician who served as the 40th Gove
1 comment
Read more