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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- OutdoorsA rock garden built stone by stone by a botany professorSlayton 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 cultureAnnie Oakley slept here: Hillsdale's Keefer HouseThe 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 propertyBuying on Lake Diane? It's a lake somebody built in the 1960sLake 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 cultureCamden got its name out of a hatThe 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 cultureJonesville: the county's first town, and its first county seatFounded 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 cultureLitchfield got its name over a few drinks in DetroitLitchfield 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.
- OutdoorsLost Nation: 2,400 acres of game cover and a shooting rangeLost 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 cultureReading's short-lived buffalo tanneryReading's city history says its 1877 buffalo tannery grew to about 200 workers and became the world's largest. The county historical society uses the more cautious phrase 'one of the largest.'
- History and cultureThe first brick house in southern Michigan, with a room you weren't meant to findThe 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 cultureThe flour mill that ran Hillsdale for ninety yearsF.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.
- OutdoorsThe grieving woman who turned a swamp into a gardenWilhelmina 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.
- OutdoorsThe lake in the Irish Hills that wasn't there in 1960Lake 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 cultureThe lake named for the chief who was forced to leave itBaw 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 cultureThe poorhouse that gave Michigan its most famous poemWill 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 cultureThe railroad-builder's mansion that became the county's memoryCharles 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 cultureThe yellow sandstone courthouse with faces in the stoneHillsdale'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 cultureThirty-two rooms and eight marble fireplaces in JonesvilleThe 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 cultureAntiques and old houses on the Chicago RoadThe old Chicago Road runs across northern Hillsdale County, connecting Allen's antique shops with Jonesville's historic houses.
- History and cultureHillsdale CollegeHillsdale 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 cultureWhy Hillsdale Calls Its Fair "The Most Popular Fair on Earth"Hillsdale's county fair began in 1851. Its grand nickname is a piece of local identity, not a measured attendance ranking.
- History and cultureWhere five rivers are bornHillsdale County sits on a high ridge where five major river systems begin and drain toward Lake Michigan and Lake Erie.
- History and cultureA Michigan UFO Sighting Got So Big That a Future President Demanded a Congressional HearingIn 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 cultureAmish country in the southSouthern Hillsdale County is home to several mostly Swiss Amish communities around Camden, Reading, and North Adams.
- Home and propertyBuying 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 propertyOutside town, you're probably on a well and septicMost Hillsdale County township homes use private wells and septic systems, and the county does not require a sale-time inspection.
- History and cultureHillsdale: the college and the headwater hillsHillsdale County pairs an 1844 college with glacial high ground where five river systems begin.
- Money and taxesBuying in a township? Watch for special assessments on top of your taxesMichigan township buyers should check for special assessments that can add separate road, sewer, water, lighting, sidewalk, or drain charges.
- Money and taxesIn Michigan, you get two property-tax bills a year — not oneMost Michigan property owners get separate summer and winter tax bills, with local rules deciding what lands on each bill.