Biohazard and Pathogen Disinfection in Houghton, MI

Houghton is the county seat of Houghton County and the largest city in Michigan's Copper Country, sitting on the Keweenaw Peninsula in the Upper Peninsula.

The city was named for Douglass Houghton, the state geologist whose reports of copper in the Keweenaw launched Michigan's copper rush.

Houghton was platted in 1854, incorporated as a village in 1861, and did not become a city until 1970.

Houghton is the fifth-largest city in the Upper Peninsula, and the 2020 census counted 8,386 residents, up from 7,708 in 2010.

The city is home to Michigan Technological University, founded in 1885 as the Michigan College of Mines, which became Houghton's primary employer after the last nearby copper mines closed in the late 1960s.

Michigan Tech hosts the annual Winter Carnival every February, famous for its massive student-built snow statues, and its Huskies men's hockey team has won three NCAA national championships (1962, 1965, and 1975).

Houghton calls itself the birthplace of professional ice hockey in the United States, because the Portage Lakers were formed there in 1903; games are still played at Dee Stadium, originally the Amphidrome.

The Portage Lake Lift Bridge linking Houghton to Hancock across the Keweenaw Waterway is the world's heaviest and widest double-decked vertical-lift bridge, and its lower deck carries snowmobile traffic in winter.

Houghton serves as the headquarters for Isle Royale National Park, the remote island wilderness park in Lake Superior.

Few American cities are snowier: Houghton averages roughly 208 inches of snow a year, and its high temperature fails to rise above freezing on about 101 days annually, the third-most of any incorporated city in the contiguous United States.