As part of my Ontonagon County Redocumentation photo project, I'm occasionally tasked with taking photos of building interiors for posterity. Knowing what a building looked like from the outside is one thing, but understanding how it works on the inside adds a whole other level to the story of our community.

In 2020, I reached out to UPPCO to see if they'd let me inside the Victoria Dam Hydropower station. They said yes! Turns out they were training up a new manager for the area and let me jump on his first tour of the facility.  

We started at the dam itself, where I got to go behind the scenes and walk along the top of the dam itself and inside the little building on top. It was pouring outside which threatened to kill my camera. I was able to snap a few shots of the spillway waterfall from an angle almost nobody gets to see before my camera started yelling at me. I wasn't going to miss this rare opportunity!

From there, we trekked down to the turbine house to see what was up. These old structures were always built with a little class and UPPCO had kept things very tidy over the years. Granted, all of the technology was out of date, which I later learned was totally updated in late-2024. 

I visited again in 2025 to see how things shaped up, and while most of it was the same, much of the technology was brand new. The entire plant can now be controlled remotely! Of note: when they were cleaning the lower ventilation shutters in the turbine room, they discovered they were made with pure copper. Neat! They also discovered that the 30-ton crane that rides along rails in the top of the building came from another building, meaning they built the turbine house to match the crane and not the other way around. No room for error here!