Bay City: sawmills, ships, and lumber-baron mansions

Bay City started life as “Lower Saginaw” — settlers moved downriver from Saginaw because the deeper water near the bay was better for shipping. That deep water made it boom. In the lumber years of the late 1800s, the Saginaw Valley was the center of the whole country’s logging trade, and Bay City was packed with sawmills — at the peak, around a hundred mills lined the river, including a couple that were the largest in the world. Logs floated down the Saginaw River to be cut and shipped out.

The river also made Bay City a shipbuilding town. Yards here turned out everything from tugboats to Great Lakes freighters to U.S. Navy warships, right up through World War II; you can still tour a Navy destroyer, the USS Edson, docked on the river. When the timber money rolled in, the lumber barons and shipbuilders built grand Victorian homes along Center Avenue — and most of them are still standing. The Center Avenue Historic District is one of the best collections of 1800s mansions in Michigan, and it’s a lovely walk.