The distinctive red color of the downtown Houghton buildings is repeated all over the UP, the midwest and even farther away. The extensive thick deposits of redbed sandstones that filled the Keweenaw Rift were quarried for building stone from 1880 to 1920, especially near Jacobsville, about 12 miles SE of Houghton. This sandstone was sculpted easily into ornamental shapes.  Thick beds of homogeneous sandstone allowed for large building blocks to be produced in prodigeous amounts, and then they were shipped to midwestern cities via the Great Lakes.