| |
History of the Houghton County Road
Commission
The Houghton County Road Commission was
born on April 4, 1910 as the county
electorate voted 7,100 for and 989
against a Good Roads System, which was
established in order to develop an
organized improvement and expansion of
roads in Houghton County.
Up
until this year, only haphazard
improvement of wagon roads into the
county, between population centers and
the copper mining areas existed.
The
first Road Commission members, appointed
by the County Board of Supervisors, were
Chairman F.J. McLain, and members E.S.
Grierson and Theodore Dengler. The first
County Highway Engineer was Randolf
Martin.
The advent of the Model T
Ford, of which under 1,000 vehicles
existed in Houghton County in 1910,
created the impetus to develop a
meaningful road system.
Offices
for the Road Commission were opened in
rented quarters in downtown Hancock with
personnel of six employees. Equipment
consisted of three Pierce Arrow plows, a
Model T Ford, one motorcycle, and five
other truck vehicles. Late in 1911, the
offices were moved to the Shelden Dee
building in Houghton.
The Board
of Road Commissioners began their road
building responsibilities with a budget
of $29,051.00, provided by the County
Board of Supervisors. The first
priorities for road improvements were to
reconstruct and straighten the route
between the two major population centers
of Hancock and Calumet.
The early
years concentrated on developing the
highways at the perimeter of the
population centers for the purpose of
serving the mining needs and also to
create a system of farm to market roads,
the first of which was the Otter Lake
Road, into south Houghton County.
The
Road Commission was developing the
roads, which were to eventually, become
state trunkline highways while
individual townships and cities were
developing the remainder of the roads in
Houghton County. As the Road Commission
improved the major routes, the state
reimbursed them a portion of that cost,
then designated those roads as state
trunkline and paid for their
maintenance.
The completion of a road
between Marquette and Houghton initiated
the placing of the first tourist road
signs by the Copper Country Commercial
Club in 1916.
The year 1917
brought the first news headlines about
two collisions on one weekend, along
with the first arrest and $10.00 fine of
an Alston man for drunk driving, after a
wild zigzag journey across the Houghton
County bridge.
In 1919, the Road
Commission replaced the horses, which
pulled large snow rollers with tractors.
A news article stated, while the
tractors are slower than horses, 2
m.p.h. vs. 4 m.p.h., they do not tire in
the large drifts and will make the
round-trip between Hancock and Calumet
in one day.
In 1922, the Road
Commission hoped to keep the roads open
for automobiles until January 1, and
only for horse sleigh after that.
In 1923, the Road Commission
moved their headquarters from Houghton
and the Shelden Dee building to the Lake
Superior Smelting Works property in
Ripley, where some equipment and
materials were already being stored.
Road use changed dramatically
between 1915 and 1925 as daily traffic
counts on the Houghton-Hancock bridge
changed from 491 teams and 993 cars in
1915 to 85 teams and 4,897 cars in 1925.
In 1926, the Road Commission hired
the first motorcycle officer, Bud
Kennedy, to patrol the county roads.
In 1927, the first trunklines are
kept open for the entire winter.
The McNitt Act passed in 1931, mandated
that the County Road Commission shall
absorb 20 percent of all township roads
each year, until all 653 miles had been
made county roads.
In 1934, the
Road Commission experienced the heaviest
period of activity in its history, as
4,731 Civil Works Administration
employees were on the payroll.
Today, the responsibility of the Road
Commission exists much as it did in the
late 1930's, to maintain, with Michigan
Transportation Funds, some 847 miles of
county roads outside of the limits of
the seven incorporated cities and
villages.
|
|
