A sugar-beet town since 1899

Caro is sugar-beet country, and it has been for well over a century. The sugar factory on the edge of town opened in 1899, back when farmers hauled their beets in by horse-drawn wagon, and it’s still running today — it’s the oldest beet-sugar factory still operating in Michigan. It’s now part of the Michigan Sugar Company, a farmer-owned cooperative whose factories anchor the whole Thumb region, and it’s one of the bigger employers around Caro.

That farm economy shows up all over town. The Tuscola County Fair has been held in Caro since the 1880s — a real agricultural fair with livestock, crops, and a midway — and the county is full of row-crop farms growing beets, beans, corn, and wheat. If you’re moving to the area, expect the rhythms of a farm town: trucks hauling beets to the factory in the fall (the “campaign,” they call it), the smell of the processing plant during the season, and a fairgrounds that’s the center of things every summer.