 | | Ground photos of the Victoria Dam don't capture how dramatic this site is. It was built in 1931 to supply electricity to a copper mine, but now serves U.P. businesses and residents. The impoundment is a popular place to boat and fish. | If Rockland seems remote, Victoria, three miles southwest, is even more so. To reach it from U.S. 45, you go over several high ridges heavily forested in hardwoods. First you come to Old Victoria's restored log miners' houses. In another mile, a road to the right leads up a hill into the mining location of Victoria, near another mine shaft. It's a collection of houses and a boarding house, all now used as vacation homes.
Victoria Dam Road ends at the impressive Victoria Dam and Reservoir, built on the Ontonagon River's West Branch in 1931 to supply power to a copper mine. Today the dam and 405-acre impoundment are owned by Upper Peninsula Power Company/Wisconsin Electric Power. Sale of UPPCO land here and elsewhere in the Western U.P. is the big news story and land use crisis of the winter of 2006. This area is less likely to be subdivided becaause south of the dam and not served by roads. Also, the slope is steep.
The boat launch on the Victoria Dam's north side gives anglers access to the almost three-mile-long lake with its good fishing for perch, northern pike, and walleye.
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