Regarding Brockway
Funding sought for road repairs
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CALUMET TOWNSHIP -- Community leaders from both Houghton and Keweenaw County held a major scenic byway symposium at the Keweenaw National Historical Park Headquarters on Tuesday to address severe weathering and structural disrepair on Brockway Mountain Drive, in Keweenaw County. Gina Nicholas, chair of the Keweenaw Outdoor Recreation Coalition (KORC), said the road is becoming unsafe for the thousands of travelers it draws to the region.
"What we're trying to do is bring attention to the situation because if you don't tell people, how are they going to know what might be available to help us?," Nicholas told the Daily Mining Gazette.
Brockway Mountain Drive is a 9.3-mile historic and scenic road built by manual labor during the Great Depression. According to KORC, the drive now draws more than 150,000 visitors annually between May and October, making its current structural deterioration an urgent hazard for motorists, motorcyclists, and cyclists.
Because the drive is classified as a scenic tourist route, it is locked out of standard MDOT gas tax distribution networks. According to KORC data, no funding to pave Brockway Mountain Drive has been available since the 1960s. While the Copper Country Trail National Byway Committee and state tourism agencies heavily promote the drive as a premier scenic spur of the regional byway system, no dedicated state funding exists to pave it.
Keweenaw County Board of Commissioners Chairman Don Piche retired from the road commission after more than 30 years. He said both Brockway Mountain Drive, the Cliff Drive, as well as the Bete Gris Road, were systematically stripped of their primary funding mechanisms during the 1970s.
Piche said that when he was with the road commission, federal officials informed the commission that it maintained too many primary roads, because they were not considered primary roads.
"The Cliff Drive was taken from the Federal Aid Fund because you can go through Mohawk or Five Mile Point Road to get to Eagle River," Piche said. "They stripped Brockway Mountain Drive of federal aid money because you can use M-26 or U.S. 41 to get where you want to go."
Piche said when the funding was lost, the burden fell to the county and the townships.
The physical toll of illicit off-road traffic along the route’s shoulders further compounds the structural breakdown of the pavement. Under Michigan state law, off-road vehicles (ORVs) are prohibited from operating on state highways, legally locking them out of the drive's twin entry points along M-26. Keweenaw County Sheriff Curt Pennala previously noted that operators bypassing these restrictions have repeatedly degraded the unpaved shoulders, causing severe soil erosion and deep ruts that steadily compromise the edges of the aging asphalt roadway.
During the final eight years of his 30-year tenure with the road commission, Piche served as maintenance foreman and was tasked with inspecting the drive. He recalled a specific spring inspection when his own truck became stuck in an area severely torn up by off-road vehicle traffic.
"Another thing that's destroyed that road is the snowmobiles," Piche said. "The road is groomed as a snowmobile trail. They come up from by Lake Uspom, and they groom it."
In 2022, Keweenaw County Road Commission Engineer/Manager Greg Kingstrom created an engineering conceptual plan drawn up to completely repave the drive, but the project carries a $10 million price tag. The plan was included in a letter sent to State Representative Greg Markkanen and Senator Ed McBroom.
"The letter was sent to Greg Markkanen and he actually called me to discuss what we might need to do," Nicholas said. "We maybe need to lean in more on the history of it, because it is so significant and it is on the Register of Historic Places as a scenic auto drive."
However, because the drive is classified strictly as a scenic tourist route rather than a primary commuter corridor, it is locked out of standard Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT) Act 51 gas tax distribution networks.
While the road commission is concurrently struggling to raise financing for a new building--an effort compounded by the ongoing costs of maintaining and purchasing required equipment--Piche emphasized that there is simply no internal money available to pave the drive.
"Brockway Mountain Drive is in such tough shape that it needs a total repair," Piche said. "It needs to be done, but I don't know where the money's going to come from."