Portage Lake Lift Bridge

The Portage Lake Lift Bridge connects the cities of Hancock and Houghton, in the US state of Michigan, across Portage Lake, a portion of the waterway which cuts across the Keweenaw Peninsula with a canal linking the final several miles to Lake Superior to the northwest. US Highway 41 and M-26 are both routed across the bridge. It is the only land-based link between the north and south sections of the Keweenaw peninsula.The original bridge on the same site was a wooden swing bridge built in 1875. The bridge was built by James P. Edward of Fox and Howard Inc. of Chicago. Three local men raised $47,000 in stocks for the toll bridge. Construction began in the spring of 1875 and was finished in the spring of 1876. This was replaced by a steel swing bridge, the Portage Canal Swing Bridge, built by the King Bridge Company in 1901. The Portage Canal Swing Bridge was damaged when a ship, the Northern Wave, collided with it in 1905. The center swinging section of the bridge was replaced and a similar incident almost occurred again in 1920, but the ship was able to stop by dropping its anchor, which snagged on the bottom of the lake. In 1959, the Portage Canal Swing Bridge was replaced, at a cost of about $11-13 million, by the current bridge which was built by the American Bridge Company.