Scotland, USA

Drive into Alma and you’ll pass a sign that says “Scotland, U.S.A.” — and the town means it. The story starts with Alma College, founded in 1886 by Michigan Presbyterians, whose church traces its roots to Scotland. The college leaned into that heritage and never looked back: it has a Kiltie Marching Band that performs in the school’s own tartan, a pipe band and Highland dancers, and even registered an official Alma College tartan in 1999.

The whole town joins in every Memorial Day weekend — a tradition since the late 1960s — for the Alma Highland Festival and Games, one of the biggest Scottish celebrations in the Midwest. For two days the Alma College campus fills with bagpipers and drummers playing in massed bands, kilted Highland dancers, and burly athletes tossing the caber (a giant wooden pole), along with clan tents, a street parade, and plenty of food. People come from all over the country.

Alma is the county’s largest city and sits on the Pine River, with a walkable historic downtown. Long before the bagpipes, it was a lumber and then an oil-refining town — but today it’s the Scottish heart of central Michigan. The Highland Festival takes place on the Saturday and Sunday of Memorial Day weekend, and the city posts details each spring.