County note shelf
Lenawee County Porch Notes
Stories, practical details, outdoor places, tax quirks, and local history connected to Lenawee County. This shelf has 5 practical notes and 28 local stories.
33 notes
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- History and cultureLenawee County's airport sits in Madison TownshipThe county airport uses an Adrian mailing address but lies in Madison Township, with a 5,000-foot paved runway and a grass crosswind strip.
- History and cultureThe Lenawee County Fair has run since 1839Adrian's fair, first held in 1839, is Michigan's longest-running county fair, and its grounds carry the memory of the state's deadliest grandstand collapse.
- History and cultureSiena Heights, the university the Adrian Dominican Sisters builtThe Adrian Dominican Sisters founded Siena Heights as a women's college in 1919; after more than a century the university announced it would close in 2026.
- History and cultureThe Irish Hills Towers were built out of spiteTwo wooden observation towers stand a few feet apart on US-12 in Cambridge Township because two 1920s neighbors kept building higher to outdo each other.
- History and cultureHudson's library started with a letter to Andrew CarnegieIn 1903 a Hudson man wrote to steel magnate Andrew Carnegie, who sent $10,000 to build the town's library, dedicated in 1905 with the U-M president speaking.
- History and cultureThe little stone shrine the Irish Hills built by handSt. Joseph Shrine on US-12 grew from a fieldstone church Irish settlers raised in the 1850s into a summer pilgrimage spot with an outdoor Stations of the Cross.
- OutdoorsThe River Raisin starts in a Lenawee County fieldThe River Raisin rises high in the Irish Hills of Woodstock Township and runs about 150 miles to Lake Erie, dropping roughly 480 feet along the way.
- History and cultureHudson, where a high school won 72 games in a rowFrom 1968 to 1975 the Hudson Tigers won 72 straight football games — a national high school record that stood for 22 years and is still the Michigan mark.
- History and cultureBlissfield's Hathaway House, the white mansion on US-223The Hathaway House in Blissfield is an 1850s Greek Revival mansion, also called the David Carpenter House, listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
- History and cultureHow a sealed pump the size of a melon built TecumsehTecumseh Products, which moved to town in 1934, made the sealed compressors inside countless refrigerators and air conditioners, and reshaped its hometown.
- History and cultureTecumseh's Hayden Mill, where Henry Ford turned soybeans into car partsAn old mill on the River Raisin in Tecumseh became one of Henry Ford's 'village industries,' processing soybeans for paint and plastic starting in 1935.
- History and cultureThe Croswell has entertained Adrian since 1866The Croswell dates to 1866, spent about 50 years as a movie house, and returned to live theater after a 1967 civic rescue.
- History and cultureA Michigan governor's house still stands on a quiet Adrian streetThe 1840s Greek Revival home of Charles Croswell, Michigan's governor from 1877 to 1881, survives in Adrian and is kept as a museum by a local DAR chapter.
- History and cultureCement City was named before the cement plant even openedThe crossroads now called Cement City renamed itself in 1901 for a Portland cement plant that mined the marl out of nearby Goose Lake to make its product.
- OutdoorsThe creek at Morenci has two names and crosses a state lineThe stream Michigan calls Bean Creek flows past Morenci and becomes Ohio's Tiffin River, named for Edward Tiffin, the first governor of Ohio.
- History and cultureAdrian College and its abolitionist beginningsAdrian College, chartered in 1859, grew out of an antislavery Methodist school and was led from the start by famed abolitionist Asa Mahan.
- History and cultureClinton's woolen mill ran for 90 years on the old Chicago RoadThe Clinton Woolen Mills, organized by 100 local stockholders in 1866, turned area wool into cloth until 1957, on a town that grew up on the Detroit-to-Chicago military road.
- History and cultureMorenci: the last city before you cross into OhioMorenci, in the far corner of Lenawee County, is the southernmost city in Michigan, sitting right on the Ohio state line.
- History and cultureThe track through Blissfield is one of the oldest in AmericaThe short line running through Blissfield follows the route of the Erie and Kalamazoo, the first railroad to reach into Michigan Territory, laid in the 1830s.
- History and cultureOnsted: the Irish Hills village a railroad put on the mapOnsted, the gateway village to Lenawee County's Irish Hills, took shape when a railroad reached it in 1884 and was incorporated in 1907.
- OutdoorsA place dark enough to see the Milky WayLake Hudson Recreation Area became Michigan's first dark-sky preserve and remains a quiet southwest Lenawee outdoor spot.
- OutdoorsA sprawling garden hidden in the Irish HillsHidden Lake Gardens is Michigan State University's large botanical garden and arboretum in Franklin Township near Tipton.
- History and cultureAdrian: where Michigan's first railroad ranAdrian's railroad origins go back to the Erie & Kalamazoo Railroad, Michigan's first railroad.
- OutdoorsDevils Lake and Manitou Beach: resort history and lake accessDevils Lake is Lenawee County's largest natural lake. Its resort era began with hotels in the 1870s, while the present yacht club formed in 1941.
- Money and taxesHudson has a city income taxHudson is one of Michigan's cities with a local income tax for residents and nonresidents who work inside the city.
- History and cultureWalker Tavern and the old road to ChicagoWalker Tavern preserves the old Chicago Road stagecoach era and the later US-12 roadside-attraction story in Cambridge Township.
- OutdoorsWhy Michigan International Speedway runs so fastMichigan International Speedway is a two-mile D-shaped oval whose long straights and sweeping 18-degree turns produce unusually fast qualifying laps.
- Home and propertyBuying on (or near) a Lenawee County lake?Lakefront homes in Lenawee County's Irish Hills can come with legal lake levels, special assessments, and lake-specific boating rules.
- History and cultureWhy Does Michigan Have So Many Places Named After Foreign Places?Michigan's map is full of foreign and classical town names — Paris, Moscow, Athens, Rome — left over from an 1800s naming boom, and locals pronounce most of them their own way.
- Home and propertyOutside town, you're probably on a well and septicMany rural Lenawee County township homes use private wells and septic systems, so buyers should ask for inspections before closing.
- History and cultureThe Irish Hills: glacial lakes, an old road, and a fast trackThe Irish Hills combine kettle lakes, U.S. 12 stagecoach history, and Michigan International Speedway in northwest Lenawee County.
- 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.