County note shelf
Saginaw County Porch Notes
Stories, practical details, outdoor places, tax quirks, and local history connected to Saginaw County. This shelf has 7 practical notes and 32 local stories.
39 notes
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- History and culture The Temple Theatre: a Shriners' movie palace with its 1927 organ still playing Saginaw's Temple Theatre opened in 1927 as a Shriners-built vaudeville and movie palace, and it still plays its original Barton pipe organ before shows.
- History and culture A 28-foot Christ and 2,000 plaster models: the Fredericks museum at SVSU The Marshall M. Fredericks Sculpture Museum at Saginaw Valley State University holds the lifetime archive of a major Detroit sculptor, free to walk through, plaster models and all.
- History and culture Birch Run: a creek of birch trees, and a depot that made the town Birch Run took its name from a birch-lined creek, grew up around an 1850s rail station, and even spent five years officially renamed Deer Lick before changing back.
- History and culture Coal Mine No. 8: when St. Charles dug Michigan's best coal In 1917 the Robert Gage Coal Company sank a 200-foot shaft near St. Charles, and for years mules and miners pulled out the highest-grade coal in the state.
- Outdoors Frankenmuth swapped its dam for a rock ramp so fish could get home Frankenmuth replaced its aging Cass River dam with a rock-ramp that lets fish climb past it, reopening more than 73 miles of upstream spawning water for the first time in a century.
- Outdoors Green Point: a wild riverbank inside the city On Saginaw's edge, where the Tittabawassee River bends, Green Point packs oak forest, marsh, and 2.5 miles of trail into a learning center run for the federal wildlife refuge.
- History and culture Hoyt Library: a New York lumber baron's $100,000 dare Jesse Hoyt left East Saginaw $100,000 for a library in 1882 — and deliberately too little, so the town would have to chip in to keep it alive.
- Outdoors Ojibway Island: the lumber baron's gift that holds Saginaw's fireworks Ojibway Island, the downtown island park where Saginaw watches its Fourth of July fireworks, sits in the parkland a lumber-fortune baron, Ezra Rust, left to the city.
- History and culture Potter Street Station: the 1881 depot that looks like a castle Saginaw's 1881 Potter Street Station, with its towers and steep dormers, is one of the largest surviving Victorian train depots in the country.
- History and culture The Castle on Federal Avenue: a post office built like a French château Saginaw's Castle Museum lives in an 1898 federal post office designed to look like a French Renaissance château — a nod to the valley's fur-trapping French roots.
- History and culture The Chesaning Showboat: a riverboat that played to the riverbank From 1937 to 2012, a showboat steamed down the Shiawassee River to a Chesaning amphitheater each summer, bringing big-name acts to a small town.
- Outdoors The Children's Zoo that started with a beaver and a coyote Saginaw's Children's Zoo opened in 1929 with a handful of native animals; nearly a century on it has a hand-carved carousel and a miniature train through ten acres of park.
- History and culture The Frankenmuth Woolen Mill: socks for the doughboys, still spinning Open on Main Street since 1894, the Frankenmuth Woolen Mill is Michigan's oldest working woolen mill — it once made 66,000 pairs of wool socks for WWI soldiers.
- History and culture The greenhouse that made a poet: Theodore Roethke's Saginaw home Pulitzer-winning poet Theodore Roethke grew up at 1805 Gratiot Avenue in Saginaw, behind his family's vast greenhouses — the 'heaven-on-earth' that shaped his most famous poems.
- History and culture The Holz-Brücke: a covered bridge two oxen dragged across the Cass Frankenmuth's wooden Holz-Brücke spans the Cass River with no metal fasteners — built by a master craftsman and pulled into place by a team of oxen in 1980.
- History and culture The Saginaw Spirit: a junior team from a Canadian league that won it all Saginaw's junior hockey team plays in a Canadian major-junior league, and in 2024 it became one of only a handful of American clubs ever to win the Memorial Cup.
- Outdoors Where five rivers meet: the Shiawassee Flats at St. Charles The Shiawassee River State Game Area near St. Charles is about 10,000 acres of managed wetland where five rivers meet — Michigan's largest managed waterfowl area, and a fall stopover for tens of thousands of ducks and geese.
- History and culture Why a small farm town has 100-plus outlet stores: Birch Run Birch Run, a small town halfway between Flint and Saginaw, has drawn shoppers off I-75 to one of the Midwest's biggest outlet centers since 1986.
- History and culture Freeland's Walleye Festival: forty years of fish, parades, and small-town spring Every April, Freeland and Tittabawassee Township throw a four-day Walleye Festival on the river — parade, carnival, fishing tournament and all.
- History and culture The quiet township making the stuff computer chips are made of Hemlock Semiconductor in Thomas Township is the largest U.S. producer of the hyper-pure polysilicon behind computer chips and solar panels.
- History and culture Zilwaukee: the town that (maybe) tried to out-spell Milwaukee Local legend says Zilwaukee's founders picked the name hoping German immigrants bound for Milwaukee would get off the boat here instead.
- History and culture An authentic Japanese tea house, in the middle of Saginaw Saginaw's Japanese garden and tea house grew from its sister-city friendship with Tokushima, Japan.
- History and culture Frankenmuth, Michigan's Little Bavaria Frankenmuth's Bavarian identity is rooted in its 1845 German Lutheran settlement and later tourism makeover.
- History and culture From lumber capital to car-parts town Saginaw's history runs from white-pine lumber capital to General Motors factory town, with the Castle Museum telling the story downtown.
- Money and taxes Saginaw has a city income tax — and it's on the higher side The city of Saginaw has a higher-tier Michigan city income tax for residents and nonresidents who work inside the city.
- History and culture The world's largest Christmas store is in Frankenmuth Bronner's CHRISTmas Wonderland grew from Wally Bronner's sign shop into Frankenmuth's year-round Christmas landmark.
- History and culture The Zilwaukee Bridge and the town with the odd name Zilwaukee's high I-75 bridge solved a drawbridge bottleneck and became famous for a costly construction mishap.
- History and culture A Little Slice of Bavaria in the Middle of Michigan A Bavarian-themed town founded by German Lutheran immigrants in 1845, now famous for its glockenspiel, covered bridge, and the country's largest chicken-dinner restaurants.
- Outdoors A great bird marsh where the rivers meet Shiawassee National Wildlife Refuge protects a remnant of the Shiawassee Flats and is a major migratory-bird destination south of Saginaw.
- History and culture Stevie Wonder, Serena Williams, and a Pulitzer poet: Saginaw's famous kids Saginaw's birth roll is wildly out of proportion to its size: Stevie Wonder, Serena Williams, Draymond Green, and Pulitzer Prize poet Theodore Roethke.
- History and culture The Eastern White Pine Michigan named the eastern white pine its state tree in 1955 — honoring the timber that built the state, and that the state nearly cut down to the last trunk.
- Home and property Big rivers meet here, so check the flood maps Saginaw County's low river corridors can put homes in mapped flood zones, so buyers should check FEMA and county flood maps.
- Home and property The Saginaw River cleanup, and the fish advisories downstream Downstream Saginaw River and Saginaw Bay buyers should know about dioxin cleanup history, fish advisories, and floodplain sediment.
- Home and property Out in the county, you're on a well and septic Many rural Saginaw County township homes use private wells and septic systems, so buyers should ask for records and inspections.
- Outdoors 10,000 wild acres on Saginaw's doorstep: the Shiawassee refuge The Shiawassee National Wildlife Refuge, five miles south of Saginaw, gathers four rivers into a marshland so vast that locals call it Michigan's Everglades.
- History and culture When Saginaw was the lumber capital of the world In the 1870s and 80s the Saginaw Valley's 80-plus sawmills made it the lumber capital of the world, and the Castle Museum keeps that story alive.
- Money and taxes Live in a Michigan village? You pay an extra layer of property tax Michigan 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 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.