The creek at Morenci has two names and crosses a state line

The stream that slides past the south edge of Morenci changes its name when it crosses the state line, which is a fitting trick for a town that sits right on the Ohio border. In Michigan it is Bean Creek — that is what the U.S. Geological Survey calls the gauge it keeps just outside town, “Bean Creek near Morenci.” The name is old and plain: early French traders called it for the wild bean plants tangled along its banks, and the Bean Creek name has stuck on the Michigan side ever since.

Cross into Fulton County, Ohio, a few miles south, and the same water becomes the Tiffin River. That name honors Edward Tiffin, the English-born doctor who became Ohio’s first governor in 1803. It is the kind of split that happens to border streams: one creek, two states, two names, depending on which bank you are standing on.

Around Morenci the creek does real work knitting the watershed together. Lime Creek joins it just north of the city, and Silver Creek comes in toward the south end before the whole thing slips into Ohio. From there it keeps gathering smaller streams on its way to join the Maumee and, eventually, Lake Erie.

For a place that prides itself on being the last Michigan town before Ohio, it is a nice bit of geography: even the local creek can’t decide which state it belongs to, and answers to whichever name the nearest bank prefers.