page_title: Hancock, Michigan
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Hancock, Michigan / History
caption_attribution_description: English: City Hall of Hancock, Michigan. The building is a Registered Michigan State Historic Site and on the National Register of Historic Places.
context_page_description: Hancock is a city in Houghton County in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is located across the Keweenaw Waterway from the city of Houghton on the Keweenaw Peninsula. The population was 4,634 at the 2010 census. The city has been consistently ranked as the third-snowiest city in the United States by The Weather Channel.
context_section_description: The story of Hancock began during the summers of 1847 and 1848, when a small-scale yet significant group of prospectors labouring on a rugged hillside (later to be named Quincy Hill) discovered a sequence of prehistoric Ojibwe copper mining pits, stretching out for 100 feet along the local amygdaloid lode. Upon inspecting a select one of the pits they realised that the Native Americans were able to take a considerable amount of copper in the form of small quantities through these small pits. The discovery on the Hicks property formed the basis upon which the Quincy Mining Company was created in October 1848, under a special charter granted by the legislature of the time.
  The earliest building in what is now the City of Hancock was a log cabin erected in 1846 on the site of the Ruggles Mining Claim, halfway up atop the hillside; it is no longer standing as the site has been taken up by the Houghton County Garage buildings. It was owned by Christopher Columbus (C.C.) Douglass, who came to live there in 1852. The Quincy Mining Company founded Hancock in the year of 1859 after purchasing the land from Douglass and building an office and mine on the site. The city was named after John Hancock, a signer of the Declaration of Independence.
  Hancock's first store was built by the Leopold brothers in 1858; the store also housed the first post office. Samuel W. Hill, an agent for the Quincy Mining Company, platted the Village of Hancock in 1859. On 20 August 1860, Bishop Frederic Baraga and Reverend Edward Jacker selected lots nine and ten of block eight in the village for the purpose of constructing a church. It was on the northeast corner of what is now Quincy and Ravine Streets. The Quincy Mining Company donated this ground, but for a reason unclear the official paperwork didn't go through for this until 2 July 1875.
  In the earliest days of Hancock, the village had been within the borders of what is now the Portage Charter Township, however, on 1 April 1861, the area was set off and organized into a new township called Hancock Township. The Portage Stamp Mill was also founded nearby at Portage Lake in 1861. In the year 1860, the Keweenaw Waterway was dredged, widening the then-Portage River to allow more aqua transportation to Hancock, and neighbouring Houghton. However, the waterway was initially opened to ships in 1859.
  Also in 1859 was the debut of the Hancock Mine, which would later be called the Sumner Mine before being switched back to the Hancock Mine once more. The mine was situated on Quincy Hill near both Summit and Franklin Streets in an area that is now part of the modern-day Finlandia Campus.
  On 10 March 1863, the Village of Hancock was officially organized and the first officers were elected in the office of William Lapp, the justice of the peace and a pioneer lawyer of the time. Hervey Coke Parke was elected as the first village president. This is considered as the founding date of Hancock.
  M.J. McGurrin opened the first drug store in the village in 1865. There were also a few small grocery stores where James Artman sold handmade harnesses. The population of the town may have been about four hundred people in all, the majority of whom were miners who had occupied smaller houses near the vicinity of their workplace, the mines.
  On Sunday, 11 April 1869, Hancock is struck by the worst fire in the community's history when a stovepipe in a local saloon where the post office is now located had exploded and engulfed the building in flames. It soon spread across the village with the help of a strong west wind. The fire ended up destroying some 150 buildings, including every store in the village and almost all of the business places in general, the wooden bridges that had stretched across the ravines, and an additional 120 homes. At the time, Hancock had no fire department or fire equipment in the village, however, this short-lived fire had completely obliterated three-fourths of Hancock. It took two years to rebuild the village. Famously, Mary Chase Perry Stratton, the founder of the Pewabic Pottery, survived the 1869 fir
caption: The Hancock Town Hall and Fire Hall is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
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