Science & invention / Politics
Douglass Houghton
1809–1845 · geologist, physician, mayor of Detroit
Detroit's beloved 'little doctor,' Michigan's first state geologist whose surveys set off the Keweenaw copper boom, and mayor of Detroit in 1842.
- Born
Troy, New York- Died
Lake Superior, near Eagle River, Michigan
aged 36- Detroit years
- 1830–1845
- Field
- Science & invention, Politics
01 / The Detroit story
The Detroit story
Douglass Houghton came to Detroit in 1830, aged twenty, after the city fathers asked his teacher Amos Eaton to recommend a public science lecturer. The small, energetic Rensselaer graduate quickly became one of the town's best-known figures, trailed by admiring young followers called 'the Houghton boys.' He served as physician-naturalist on Henry Schoolcraft's expeditions to Lake Superior and the Mississippi headwaters in 1831–1832, vaccinating more than two thousand Ojibwe against smallpox, then built a busy medical practice in Detroit. When Michigan became a state he was named its first state geologist and also the University of Michigan's first professor of geology, mineralogy and chemistry. His reports on Upper Peninsula copper launched the Keweenaw mining rush. Elected mayor of Detroit in 1842, he kept surveying, and in October 1845 he drowned when his boat capsized in a Lake Superior storm. His body was recovered the next spring and buried at Elmwood.
Highlights
- Mayor of Detroit, 1842
- First state geologist of Michigan (1837–1845)
- His copper reports triggered the Keweenaw mining boom
- Vaccinated over 2,000 Ojibwe against smallpox in 1832
- Houghton, Houghton County and Houghton Lake are named after him
02 / Their Detroit places
Their Detroit places 1
Where they lived, worked, performed and liked to hang out. Closed and demolished places stay here too, because they are part of the city's history.
Buried here · 1846
Elmwood Cemetery
His remains, found on the Lake Superior shore in spring 1846, were brought back to Detroit and buried here.