Home Sweet Houghton

A column in the Detroit Free Press has raised a few eyebrows around the Keweenaw Peninsula.  Titled Shades of Detroit in the Keweenaw, it suggests that the Keweenaw is a “miniature Motor City” because the two areas share the visible and infrastructural challenges of communities that were built up around now-declining industries (mining in the Copper Country’s case, and of course autos in Detroit’s).

The author, Bill McGraw, is in no way entirely negative about the Keweenaw Peninsula — he rightly gives a nod to its “natural beauty and friendly Yoopers” amid communities like Calumet (10 miles up the road from Houghton) that still have plenty of charm.   Noting that the Keweenaw is the “Upper Peninsula’s peninsula,” he describes it as “an enchanting land of hills, rocks, forests, bears, eagles, saunas, Lake Superior and pannukakku, Finnish custard pancakes.”

McGraw does, however, also rightly point out some side effects of economic decline that are inescapable for both Detroit and the Keweenaw.  Let’s be honest – it’s hard to miss the neglected buildings that dot the route between Houghton and Calumet and north towards Copper Harbor and the area’s population is not what it was 100 years ago.

It’s negatives such as those that got things going in the comments section of McGraw’s piece, where Yoopers and Detroit supporters traded barbs over the relative merits of city vs. country living.  One man’s unspoiled beauty is another’s animal-infested wilderness, apparently, just as what is to some an edgy, hip urban lifestyle is to others a crime-ridden ghetto.

What those obviously overblown criticisms underscore, as one commenter noted, is that both places don’t have a whole lot of direct contact with each other.  That’s not surprising.  Detroit is a 10-hour drive from Houghton, 3 hours farther away than Minneapolis or Chicago, and the only way to fly between the two is through Minneapolis.   The two communities are almost as far apart from each other as you can get and still be in Michigan.

Image: www.greenwichmeantime.com

And while the article gets it right in many ways, McGraw fails to point out one important distinction between the two: crime.  In a nutshell they’ve got it (like any other big city) and we don’t.  The federal statistics page for Detroit lists tens of thousands of violent crimes per year there, while the corresponding entry for Keweenaw County, where Calumet is located, doesn’t even include an entry for violent crime.

Now, this is not to suggest in any way that there is no crime of any kind in the Keweenaw, nor that you put your life at risk anytime you walk down a Detroit street (being from St. Louis, another city that has faced its issues, I know how statistics can distort reality).  However, there is no doubting that violent crime is minimal in the Copper Country, and that makes it a very safe and pleasant place to be a kid … or a grownup.

What’s your reaction to the Free Press column?  Can Houghton learn anything from Detroit, and vice versa?