Photo: Alvah Bradish, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
Douglass Houghton was born in Troy, New York, in 1809. He studied science and medicine and moved to Detroit in 1830.
In 1831 and 1832 he joined Henry Schoolcraft’s expeditions to the source of the Mississippi as a doctor and naturalist.
State geologist
When Michigan became a state, Houghton was named its first state geologist in 1837. He also served as mayor of Detroit.
His 1841 report described copper deposits in the Keweenaw Peninsula. It helped set off the copper rush in the 1840s.
The linear survey
Houghton worked to combine the federal land survey with a geological survey, so surveyors would record minerals as they marked township lines. William Austin Burt’s crews were working on that survey when they found iron near Negaunee in 1844.
Death on the lake
In October 1845 Houghton’s small boat was caught in a storm off the Keweenaw near Eagle River. He drowned at 36.
The city of Houghton and Houghton Lake are named for him, along with a hall at Michigan Tech. His work helped open the Upper Peninsula’s mining century.
