Welcome to our winter series for 2024-25 which will take you on a tour of the Upper Peninsula. Be sure to collect all the codes along the way as you will need them to help find the bonus geocache location. The geocaches are guaranteed to be available through Easter Sunday April 20.. Have fun and enjoy!
Houghton County (/ˈhoʊtən/; HOH-tən) is a county in the Upper Peninsula in the U.S. state of Michigan. As of the 2020 census, the population was 37,361.[2] The county seat and largest city is Houghton.[3][4] Both the county and the city were named for Michigan State geologist and Detroit Mayor Douglass Houghton.[5][3]
Houghton County is part of the Houghton Micropolitan Statistical Area, which also includes Keweenaw County, and was part of Copper Country during the mining boom of the latter half of the 19th century and the early part of the 20th century.
In 1843, the Upper Peninsula was divided into Mackinac, Chippewa, Marquette, Schoolcraft, Delta, and Ontonagon Counties.[6] In 1845, Houghton County boundaries were defined, with areas partitioned from Marquette and Ontonagon Counties. The new county was named after Douglass Houghton, the new state's first State Geologist, who extensively explored the Upper Peninsula's mineralogy.[6][7] The original boundaries of Houghton County included the future Keweenaw and Baraga Counties.
In 1846, the county was organized into three townships: Eagle Harbor, Houghton, and L'Anse. Keweenaw County was set off from Houghton County in 1861 and Baraga County was set off in 1875.[9]
Houghton County's history is heavily marked by immigration. At one of the peaks of its population, the 1910 census had 40.6% of its population of 88,098 as foreign-born, with 89.3% of the population being either foreign-born or having at one or both of their parents as foreign-born. 70.6% of all voters were foreign-born, and only 5.1% of voters were native-born with native parents. This amalgam of immigrants from dozens of countries created a unique culture, especially once population growth stopped, and the county shrank in population to its current numbers. Heavily representative among many ethnicities were the Finnish. The 1910 census listed 13.1% of the residents being Finnish-born (out of the 32.3% total of the residents listed as foreign-born). The 2010 census lists almost the same proportion (32.5%) of the population as having Finnish ancestors.[10]
Amid the Great Depression of the 1930s, a sharp increase in unemployment among workers in the mining and timber industries caused a pivot to potato production. For a brief time in the 1930s and 1940s, the region became a major exporter of potatoes within the United States.[11]
In June 2018, a major flash flood caused sinkholes and washouts in the towns of Chassell, Houghton, Ripley, Lake Linden, and Hubbell.[12]