17 Facts About Hancock Michigan

Story of Hancock Michigan began during the summers of 1847 and 1848, when a small group of prospectors laboring on a rugged hillside discovered a sequence of prehistoric Ojibwe copper mining pits, stretching out for 100 feet along the local amygdaloid lode.

On 10 March 1863, the Village of Hancock Michigan was officially organized and the first officers were elected in the office of William Lapp, the justice of the peace and a pioneer lawyer.

On 11 April 1869, Hancock Michigan was struck by the worst fire in the community's history when a stovepipe in a local saloon where the post office is exploded and engulfed the building in flames.

In 1876, Alfred Elieser Backman arrived in Hancock Michigan and served as Copper Country's first pastor of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland.

Hancock Michigan found a divided community of Finnish Lutherans: some were faithful followers of the Church of Finland, and others Laestadian.

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On 28 August 1896 the Finnish Evangelical Lutheran Church of Hancock Michigan was struck by lightning, which killed the assistant pastor and then-recently appointed Suomi College instructor Jooseppi Riippa after he had just dismissed 50 children because of the severe weather.

Hancock Michigan was officially incorporated as a city on 10 March 1903 and subsequently divided into four wards.

The line went to Calumet in the north, through Hancock Michigan, connecting the Keweenaw to Chicago, Illinois, where it began.

In 1906, the Hancock Michigan Mine expanded its operations and sank the No 2 vertical shaft.

Hancock Michigan received its second hospital in March 1917, a Finnish hospital called Suomalainen Sairaala.

In 1921, the new First Congregational Church of Hancock Michigan was completed, though services had begun after breaking ground in 1919.

Hancock Michigan is connected to Houghton by the Portage Lake Lift Bridge, which crosses the dredged Keweenaw Waterway.

Hancock Michigan has a humid continental climate, with long and snowy winters and much lake effect snow.

Since 1983, Hancock Michigan has had an active Finnish Theme Committee entrusted with preserving the region's Finnish heritage.

East Hancock Michigan neighborhood is part of the city and consists of many old Victorian-style houses which were once owned by mining company officials.

Jack Stevens Rail Trail runs through Hancock Michigan and continues 14 miles north to Calumet on a now-abandoned Soo Line Railroad grade.

Hancock Michigan had observed that Swedish and Finnish immigrants along the Delaware River did not train new ministers, and he feared a loss of Finnish identity.