The village where Main Street is the county line

Stand on Main Street in Casnovia and you can be in two counties without taking a step. The road runs north and south straight down the boundary line: the east side of the street is in Muskegon County, the west side in Kent. The village proper sits partly in eastern Casnovia Township, on the Muskegon side, and partly in western Tyrone Township, on the Kent side. One little crossroads town, split clean down the middle.

A man named Lot Fulkerson founded the place in 1850, and a post office followed the next year. It was platted in 1862 and made a village in 1875. Back then this was lumber and then farm country, in the rolling land between Muskegon and Grand Rapids. The name is a small puzzle people still argue about. The usual story traces it to two Latin words — casa for home and nova for new — making Casnovia, roughly, “new home.”

Living on a county line sounds quaint, but it ties real knots. Sheriff calls, road repairs, school districts, even which county gets your property taxes — all of it can hinge on which side of the centerline your front porch lands on. Border towns like this kept two sets of officials within shouting distance for generations. And the line on the map almost never matches the line of the actual pavement.

It is a quiet place now — barely 300 people — with the highways M-37 and M-46 running together through the south end and dropping you toward Kent City a couple of miles on. But the next time someone tells you a Michigan town is “in” a county, remember the village where the answer is both. In Casnovia you can cross a county line to borrow a cup of sugar from the neighbor across the street.