County note shelf
Lapeer County Porch Notes
Stories, practical details, outdoor places, tax quirks, and local history connected to Lapeer County. This shelf has 7 practical notes and 23 local stories.
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- OutdoorsA 1927 golf course on the shore of Lake NepessingLapeer Country Club has played golf on the same ground since 1927, its fairways laid out over 150 acres of greens and pines overlooking Lake Nepessing just west of town.
- History and cultureAttica was Mill Station, then Elk Lake, before it settled on a nameThe post office at Attica changed its name twice before it stuck — opening as Mill Station in 1867, becoming Elk Lake in 1870, and finally taking the township's name, Attica, in 1871.
- Money and taxesDoes Lapeer have a city income tax?Yes. The City of Lapeer charges 1% to residents and 0.5% to nonresidents who work in the city. A 48446 mailing address does not prove you live in the city.
- History and cultureGoodland Township: the fires took the trees, so the plows cameGoodland Township started as a lumber community, but the great Michigan fires of 1871 and 1881 burned through the pine — and what grew back, on the cleared ground, was farms.
- History and cultureImlay is named for a Connecticut man who reportedly never set foot hereWilliam H. Imlay, a Connecticut businessman, bought up forest land in the 1830s; the township organized in 1850 took his name, and the railroad village platted in 1870 became Imlay City — though Imlay himself is said never to have visited.
- OutdoorsLake Minnawanna and the 700 acres around itMetamora-Hadley Recreation Area wraps 723 acres of woods and trails around 80-acre Lake Minnawanna in Hadley Township — a state park with a campground, swim beach, and fishing pier.
- History and cultureLapeer Days: a free street party that's outlasted a centuryEvery August, downtown Lapeer closes to traffic for Lapeer Days — a three-day festival that's run for more than 120 years and bills itself as Michigan's largest free festival.
- History and cultureNorth Branch is named for a branch of the Flint RiverNorth Branch village and township take their name from the north branch of the Flint River, where the Beach family helped establish a settlement in 1854.
- History and cultureOtter Lake got its name from one bad day for the ottersOn September 29, 1838, a hunter named Andrew McArthur spotted five otters swimming in a Lapeer County lake, shot one, and the name stuck — to the lake and later the village built beside it.
- History and cultureThe Vlasic pickle empire was born on Blacks Corners RoadVlasic's first dedicated plant opened in Imlay City in 1957, when Joseph Vlasic bought a small pickle works on Blacks Corners Road — the site that grew into one of America's best-known pickle brands.
- History and cultureAlmont began as Newburg, then took a Mexican diplomat's nameAlmont's early dates mark different milestones: settlement in 1833, Newburg's establishment in 1834, platting in 1836, the Almont name in 1846, and incorporation in 1865. The village calls itself Michigan's sixth-oldest.
- History and cultureColumbiaville was Niverville first — and a lumber baron made trains stop hereBorn as the sawmill hamlet of Niverville in 1848, renamed for a New York county in 1857, and shaped by lumber merchant William Peter — who built the 1893 brick depot with a deed clause forcing every passenger train to stop.
- History and cultureHadley's old mill is now a township museumHadley's 1873-74 flour-and-feed mill, the third on its site, now anchors Hartwig Community Park as a local-history museum.
- History and cultureThe 1881 fire that started here and became the Red Cross's first jobThe Great Thumb Fire of 1881 ignited in northern Lapeer County, burned a million acres across four counties, killed roughly 280 people, and became the American Red Cross's first disaster relief operation.
- History and cultureThe general who invented Muzak gave Dryden a free parkGeneral Squier Memorial Park in Dryden was a 'country club for country people' opened by George Owen Squier — the Signal Corps major general who patented the wired music service he named Muzak.
- OutdoorsThe Lapeer State Game Area: thousands of public acres on the Flint River bottomlandSeveral thousand acres of state land assembled in the 1940s along the Flint River — working habitat open to hunters, hikers, and birders, with a staffed public shooting range off Roods Lake Road.
- History and cultureThe Lapeer State Home: a thousand-acre town that vanished inside the cityFrom 1895 to 1991, Lapeer held a state institution for people with disabilities — the Lapeer State Home, later Oakdale — that grew to thousands of residents, a hundred-plus buildings, and the county's largest payroll.
- History and cultureThe Pix: Lapeer's 1941 movie house, dark for a year and lit ever sinceAn art deco single-screen theater that opened on Nepessing Street in 1941, went dark in 1996, and was bought by the city and reborn in 1997 as a live-performance stage running about fifty shows a season.
- OutdoorsThe Polly Ann Trail: a railroad that locals couldn't stop nicknamingA 20-mile non-motorized state trail on the old Pontiac, Oxford & Northern railbed, running through Dryden and Imlay City — to a trailhead on a street named P.O. & N.
- History and cultureWhy it's called Lapeer: French traders, the river, and 'the stone'Lapeer is 'la pierre' — French for 'the stone' — worn down into one word for the flinty rock at the river crossing, the same gray stone that named Flint downstream.
- History and cultureA railroad town and the Eastern Michigan State FairImlay City grew from a railroad depot and still hosts the Eastern Michigan State Fair.
- History and cultureMetamora's horse farms and hunt-country historyMetamora's equestrian identity grew around open land, horse farms, and a hunt club that established its local country in the late 1920s.
- History and cultureMichigan's oldest working courthouseLapeer's 1845-46 courthouse is the oldest courthouse still in use in Michigan.
- Money and taxesNo city income tax in Imlay CityImlay City has no city income tax; Lapeer, the county's one taxing city, takes 0.5% from Imlay City residents who commute there for work.
- Home and propertyBuying on one of the county's lakesLapeer County lakefront buyers should ask about legal lake levels, assessments, dock rules, associations, and septic systems.
- Home and propertyOut in the township, you're on a well and septicMost Lapeer County township homes outside the cities and villages use private wells and septic systems.
- History and cultureLapeer: Michigan's oldest working courthouse, and horse country out the back doorLapeer County pairs the 1846 Greek Revival courthouse — Michigan's oldest still in use — with the rolling hunt-country hills around Metamora.
- Money and taxesLive in a Michigan village? You pay an extra layer of property taxMichigan village residents usually pay village property taxes on top of township taxes, so the village boundary can change a buyer's total rate.
- 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.