Brockway Mountain Drive is an 8.8-mile scenic roadway just west of Copper Harbor in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan in the United States. The drive runs along the ridge of Brockway Mountain on the Keweenaw Fault and climbs to 1,320 feet above sea level, 720 feet above the surface of Lake Superior. The road was constructed by the county road commission with funding through Depression-era work programs in 1933. The peak was named for Daniel D. Brockway, local pioneer settler, postmaster and state road commissioner.
About Brockway Mountain Drive in brief
Brockway Mountain Drive is an 8.8-mile scenic roadway just west of Copper Harbor in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan in the United States. The drive runs along the ridge of Brockway Mountain on the Keweenaw Fault and climbs to 1,320 feet above sea level, 720 feet above the surface of Lake Superior. The road was constructed by the county road commission with funding through Depression-era work programs in 1933. The peak was named for Daniel D. Brockway, local pioneer settler, postmaster and state road commissioner. On a clear day, Isle Royale is visible approximately 50 miles in distance from the top of the mountain. During the winter, the road is closed to cars and used as a snowmobile trail. There are no posted speed limits along the roadway, however the ‘problem’ of people driving too fast was basically’self-correcting’, according to a former Kewenaw County Sheriff’s Department deputy. The roadway twists and turns as it alternately climbs and descends several smaller hills along the ridgeline. Along the drive, several viewpoints provide the opportunity to pull off and take in the surroundings. On the road, Freighters occasionally can be seen traversing Lake Superior, and on clear days Isle Royale can be spotted nearly 50 miles in the distance.
According to the commission, 200 vehicles per day use the roadway on average. This road is one of the highest scenic roadways above sealevel in the US between the Rocky and Allegheny mountains. The western end starts at M-26 near Lake Bailey and Agate Harbor. The eastern end is at the end of the Oren Krumm Trail, part of the Brockway Mountains Audubon Sanctuary. The first road to the summit of Brockways Mountain was first proposed in the 1920s by Warren H. Manning, a renowned landscape architect. The current road was designed in 1932 by Calizumet Park Park, a landscape architect in Agassiz, Michigan, and involved three different options from the Silver River River to the Silver Lake River near the Gold River. It was named in honor of the first resident of the area, Daniel Brockway. He built the first permanent structure in the Copper Harbor area, a copper boom house, which was used by the miners and scientists in the area at the time of his death on May 9, 1899. He was buried on the ridge west of the town of Gold Harbor.
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This page is based on the article Brockway Mountain Drive published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 07, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
