Reviewed by Victor R. Volkman
Brockway Mountain Stories is a beautifully illustrated tribute to the 2013 decision of Clyde and Lloyd Wescoat to relinquish their family’s nearly 80 year ownership of the 320 acres which comprised Brockway’s summit. Through a consortium of public and private donors both large and small, this beautiful and essential piece of the Keweenaw skyline will remain forever accessible to the public under the care of Eagle Harbor Township. As you’ll learn in this book, Brockway Mountain Drive, the nine-mile-long road to the summit, literally opened the door to tourism in the Keweenaw Peninsula in the early 1930s. Prior to this, the peninsula was primarily just a series of copper mining towns with Calumet as its crown jewel.
The summit on Brockway Mountain sits 720 feet above Lake Superior and literally a few hundred yards from its shore. Owing to this extreme elevation, you can see Isle Royale some 50 miles northwest on a clear day as well as Copper Harbor and Eagle Harbor, of course. Brockway Mountain was named for Daniel D. Brockway, one of the pioneer residents of the area. The road can be accessed from either Eagle Harbor or Copper Harbor and serves as a scenic loop off M-26. The western end starts at M-26 near Lake Bailey and Agate Harbor. Brockway Mountain Drive ascends along the ridgeline of the Keweenaw Fault. It is the highest scenic roadway between the Alleghenies and the Rocky Mountain foothills.
Although I’ve only been to the summit of Brockway Mountain a couple of times in my 60 years, it is an unforgettable vista. My last visit was during my honeymoon in 1990 when we spent a few days enjoying some Copper Country Cruising. However, until reading Paul LaVanway’s Brockway Mountain Stories, I knew nothing than was printed on the rustic M-DOT road signage. This 90-page book is actually a combined edition of two small booklets that have been out of print since at least 2008: The Brockway Mountain Drive Story and The Keweenaw Mountain Lodge Story. Given that the two public works projects grew up concurrently, combining them makes a lot of sense. Lloyd Wescoat’s Mudminnow Press has produced it as sort of a “mini coffee table book” type format in paperback. This keeps it affordable while allowing full scope of the many panoramic maps and photos to be easily read.
Chronologically, the creation of Brockway Mountain Drive starts a few years before Keweenaw Mountain Lodge and this is reflected in the book’s sequence. The photo captions provide enough detail that you can get sort of a “Cliff Notes” (pun intended) shorter version of the history by just looking at the photos and reading the captions. The effects of the Great Depression are largely lost to anyone born in the 21st century, so it is worth noting that “work relief” was seen as an essential component to bringing country back on its feet following Black Monday, October 28th 1929 when the Dow Jones lost 13% of its value in a single day. Jobs, life savings, and homes were lost to a generation of Americans. In the Copper Country, unemployment crested above 65% of working men unemployed.
Showing true “sisu”, the Keweenaw County Road Commission (KCRC) proposed two projects in the summer of 1932: a lakeshore drive connecting Eagle Harbor and Copper Harbor (now M-26) and Brockway Mountain Drive up to the summit and down the opposite side. Thanks to availability of funds from the Herbert Hoover’s Reconstruction Finance Corporation, the KCRC workforce ballooned from roughly 70 to 80 individuals to a peak of between 600 and 700 men. Shockingly, by today’s standards, all work was done by men and their shovels. Not a powered single steam shovel, road grader, or digger was used! Furthermore, no surveying instruments were used, everything was done by eyeballing! This is just the beginning of the story and if you want to know more, you’ll want to get your own copy of Brockway Mountain Stories.
The book’s second half focuses on the story of the Keweenaw Mountain Lodge. Although not a Sisyphean effort to build a nine-mile-long mountain road with a shovel, the Lodge had its own unique engineering and economic puzzles to work out. Starting literally a year after the Brockway Mountain Drive was begun, a project called “The Keweenaw Park and Golf Course” began to take shape. In the end, the Keweenaw Copper Company donated 168 acres about a mile southwest of Copper Harbor with beautiful views of Lake Superior. The long and checkered history of this property as it switches back and forth from public to private ownership over the decades is fascinating reading. For example, one investor group wanted to make it a year-round resort with winter sports featured. However, that group failed within months because it could not book enough rooms and therefore meals etc. I could write an equal amount about the Lodge as I have about Brockway Mountain Drive, but space prohibits me from going on further. I encourage you to explore this wonderful book on your own!
My favorite part is the short first-person interview pieces that are scattered throughout. Oral history provides more color and life than you can get from any number of newspaper articles, road commission board minutes, and other prosaic written artifacts. Brockway Mountain Stories is a fascinating, meticulously researched, and graphically beautifully designed book that sheds new light on one of the most dramatic and remote areas of this rugged peninsula. This 2024 UP Notable Book Award winner makes a great gift for anyone interested in the local history of the Keweenaw Peninsula and its pioneers.
