County note shelf
Hillsdale County Porch Notes
Stories, practical details, outdoor places, tax quirks, and local history connected to Hillsdale County. This shelf has 5 practical notes and 23 local stories.
28 notes
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- Outdoors A rock garden built stone by stone by a botany professor Slayton Arboretum at Hillsdale College grew from a 14-acre 1922 gift into a hand-built landscape of rock gardens, waterfalls, and an amphitheater carved out of an old gravel pit.
- History and culture Annie Oakley slept here: Hillsdale's Keefer House The 1885 Keefer House on Hillsdale's main corner put up railroad-era travelers from Buffalo Bill Cody to Annie Oakley, sat empty for two decades, and reopened as a boutique hotel.
- Home and property Buying on Lake Diane? It's a lake somebody built in the 1960s Lake Diane in Amboy Township is a private developer-built reservoir from the mid-1960s, held back by a dam and ringed with small platted lots — facts worth knowing before you buy on it.
- History and culture Camden got its name out of a hat The village of Camden in southern Hillsdale County was first called Cranbrook; settlers later picked the new name at random by drawing it from a hat in 1840.
- History and culture Jonesville: the county's first town, and its first county seat Founded in 1828 where the Sauk Trail crossed the St. Joseph River, Jonesville was Hillsdale County's first settlement and earliest county seat before the title moved to Hillsdale.
- History and culture Litchfield got its name over a few drinks in Detroit Litchfield was nearly named Columbus until a settler rode to the Michigan Legislature in Detroit and, by 'free use of liquid and other arguments,' got it called Litchfield instead.
- Outdoors Lost Nation: 2,400 acres of game cover and a shooting range Lost Nation State Game Area spreads across roughly 2,400 acres of Jefferson and Pittsford townships, with a stretch of the North Country Trail and a public DNR shooting range.
- History and culture Reading once ran the world's biggest buffalo tannery In 1877 a Reading tannery began turning western buffalo hides into robes and grew into the largest buffalo tannery in the world — until the slaughter of the bison ended both the herds and the trade.
- History and culture The first brick house in southern Michigan, with a room you weren't meant to find The Munro House in Jonesville, southern Michigan's first brick house, was a station on the Underground Railroad — and still has the hidden room where freedom seekers sheltered.
- History and culture The flour mill that ran Hillsdale for ninety years F.W. Stock bought a small Hillsdale gristmill in 1869 and grew it into one of the largest family-owned flour mills east of the Mississippi before Pillsbury took it over.
- Outdoors The grieving woman who turned a swamp into a garden Wilhelmina Stock filled a swampy lot behind her Hillsdale home and spent twelve years building it into a garden of ponds and pavilions that the town still keeps up today.
- Outdoors The lake in the Irish Hills that wasn't there in 1960 Lake LeAnn in Somerset Township is a man-made all-sports lake built on old farmland in the early 1960s, now a 2,200-lot community with state-enforced no-wake bays.
- History and culture The lake named for the chief who was forced to leave it Baw Beese Lake in Hillsdale carries the name of the Potawatomi leader whose band fished and farmed the area until the U.S. government forced them west in 1840.
- History and culture The poorhouse that gave Michigan its most famous poem Will Carleton's tearjerker 'Over the Hill to the Poor-House' grew out of his walks to the old Hillsdale County Farm, and the building still stands east of town.
- History and culture The railroad-builder's mansion that became the county's memory Charles T. Mitchell helped build the railroad into Hillsdale, then built a Second Empire mansion in 1869 that now holds the county's genealogy and a newspaper run going back to 1846.
- History and culture The yellow sandstone courthouse with faces in the stone Hillsdale's 1899 county courthouse, designed by Claire Allen in local yellow sandstone, carries human and lion faces carved into its arcade and a clock tower over the town.
- History and culture Thirty-two rooms and eight marble fireplaces in Jonesville The 1874 Grosvenor House in Jonesville was built by a Michigan lieutenant governor and designed by the architect of the State Capitol; it is now a museum of thirty-two rooms.
- History and culture "The Most Popular Fair on Earth" The Hillsdale County Fair is one of Michigan's oldest county fairs and a long-running September homecoming for the city and county.
- History and culture Antiques and old houses on the Chicago Road The old Chicago Road runs across northern Hillsdale County, connecting Allen's antique shops with Jonesville's historic houses.
- History and culture Hillsdale College Hillsdale College is one of Michigan's oldest colleges, known for its early antislavery and coeducational charter and its modern independence from government funding.
- History and culture Where five rivers are born Hillsdale County sits on a high ridge where five major river systems begin and drain toward Lake Michigan and Lake Erie.
- History and culture A Michigan UFO Sighting Got So Big That a Future President Demanded a Congressional Hearing In March 1966, UFO sightings near Dexter and Hillsdale drew Walter Cronkite, an Air Force "swamp gas" explanation, and a congressional-hearing demand from a young Gerald Ford.
- History and culture Amish country in the south Southern Hillsdale County is home to several mostly Swiss Amish communities around Camden, Reading, and North Adams.
- Home and property Buying on (or near) a Hillsdale County lake? Hillsdale County lake homes can come with legal lake levels, lake special assessments, lake associations, and lake-specific boating rules.
- Home and property Outside town, you're probably on a well and septic Most Hillsdale County township homes use private wells and septic systems, and the county does not require a sale-time inspection.
- History and culture Hillsdale: the college on the hill and the roof of southern Michigan Hillsdale County pairs its famous 1844 college with the highest countryside in southern Michigan — headwater hills where three river systems begin.
- Money and taxes Buying in a township? Watch for special assessments on top of your taxes Michigan township buyers should check for special assessments that can add separate road, sewer, water, lighting, sidewalk, or drain charges.
- Money and taxes In Michigan, you get two property-tax bills a year — not one Most Michigan property owners get separate summer and winter tax bills, with local rules deciding what lands on each bill.