County note shelf
Missaukee County Porch Notes
Stories, practical details, outdoor places, tax quirks, and local history connected to Missaukee County. This shelf has 4 practical notes and 13 local stories.
17 notes
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- History and culture The Aetna Earthworks: two old rings on a gravel ridge A pair of circular earthen enclosures on a glacial ridge in Aetna Township, built around 1200 AD and now one of Missaukee County's two National Register sites.
- History and culture Ebels: the general store that ate a town's main street Ebels General Store in tiny Falmouth has run since 1920, growing from a horse-drawn delivery wagon into a destination meat market and USDA processing plant.
- History and culture Lake City and the Greatest Fourth in the North Lake City packs four days of parades, contests, and lakeside fireworks into its Independence Day celebration, the Greatest Fourth in the North.
- Outdoors Long Lake: eleven rustic sites down a string of back roads Long Lake State Forest Campground near Lake City is a small, rustic, first-come state campground with eleven sites, a hand pump, and good fishing on a quiet lake.
- History and culture The Missaukee courthouse that burned in a February night Missaukee County's 1882 frame courthouse in Lake City burned in 1944, taking records with it; the buff-brick building that replaced it in 1955 still serves the county.
- History and culture Moorestown: a church at one end, a schoolhouse at the other Moorestown in Norwich Township was a Clam River lumber village founded in 1881; today an old church and the Hunt Schoolhouse bookend a main street that mostly went away.
- History and culture Vogel Center: a Dutch farm colony older than the lumber towns Jan Vogel led Dutch homesteaders to the woods east of McBain in 1869, founding Vogel Center; its Christian Reformed church, organized in 1872, marked 150 years in 2022.
- History and culture Falmouth: the town that almost kept the county seat Falmouth briefly held Missaukee County's courthouse before the seat moved to the settlement that became Lake City.
- History and culture Jennings: the lumber town that all but disappeared Jennings was once a busy Missaukee lumber town on Crooked Lake, then many of its houses moved away with the mills.
- History and culture Reeder Township and the family that named it Reeder Township keeps the name of one of Missaukee County's first settler families, even after Reeder became Lake City.
- Money and taxes Do Lake City or McBain have a city income tax? Lake City and McBain levy no city income tax, and neither does Cadillac; the closest cities that do are Grayling and Big Rapids, about an hour away.
- History and culture Lake City: Michigan's Christmas Tree Capital Lake City grew from lumber to Lake Missaukee resort life and then into Michigan's Christmas Tree Capital.
- History and culture McBain: a Dutch farm town with a Rambler streak McBain grew from a sawmill settlement into Missaukee County's Dutch-rooted farm town.
- Outdoors The Muskegon headwaters and the Dead Stream country Eastern Missaukee is Muskegon River headwaters country, with Reedsburg Dam, Dead Stream Flooding, and state forest land.
- Home and property Wells and septic in Missaukee County: what buyers should know Missaukee County does not require point-of-sale septic inspections, so township buyers should order their own well and septic checks.
- 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.