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 cultureThe Temple Theatre: a Shriners' movie palace with its 1927 organ still playingSaginaw'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 cultureA 28-foot Christ and 2,000 plaster models: the Fredericks museum at SVSUThe 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 cultureBirch Run: a creek of birch trees, and a depot that made the townBirch 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 cultureCoal Mine No. 8: a St. Charles coalfield survives at HartleySt. Charles grew at the center of the Saginaw Valley coalfield; today Coal Mine No. 8 survives as a historical site and museum at Hartley Outdoor Education Center.
- OutdoorsFrankenmuth swapped its dam for a rock ramp so fish could get homeFrankenmuth 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.
- OutdoorsGreen Point: a wild riverbank inside the cityOn 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 cultureHoyt Library: a New York lumber baron's $100,000 dareJesse 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.
- OutdoorsOjibway Island: the lumber baron's gift that holds Saginaw's fireworksOjibway 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 culturePotter Street Station: Saginaw's 1882 railroad gatewayBuilt in 1881-82 and opened in July 1882, Bradford L. Gilbert's 285-foot depot served as Saginaw's primary passenger station for more than 80 years.
- History and cultureThe Castle on Federal Avenue: a post office built like a French châteauSaginaw'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 cultureThe Chesaning Showboat: a riverboat that played to the riverbankFrom 1937 to 2012, a showboat steamed down the Shiawassee River to a Chesaning amphitheater each summer, bringing big-name acts to a small town.
- OutdoorsThe Children's Zoo that started with a beaver and a coyoteSaginaw'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 cultureThe Frankenmuth Woolen Mill: socks for the doughboys, still spinningOpen 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 cultureThe greenhouse that made a poet: Theodore Roethke's Saginaw homePulitzer-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 cultureThe Holz-Brücke: a covered bridge two oxen dragged across the CassFrankenmuth'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 cultureThe Saginaw Spirit: a junior team from a Canadian league that won it allSaginaw's junior hockey team plays in a Canadian major-junior league and won the 2024 Memorial Cup on home ice.
- OutdoorsWhere five rivers meet: the Shiawassee Flats at St. CharlesThe 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 cultureWhy a small farm town has 100-plus outlet stores: Birch RunBirch 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 cultureFreeland's Walleye Festival: forty years of fish, parades, and small-town springEvery April, Freeland and Tittabawassee Township throw a four-day Walleye Festival on the river — parade, carnival, fishing tournament and all.
- History and cultureThe quiet township making the stuff computer chips are made ofHemlock Semiconductor in Thomas Township is the only U.S.-owned maker of hyper-pure polysilicon and one of five worldwide serving leading-edge chips.
- History and cultureZilwaukee: the town that (maybe) tried to out-spell MilwaukeeLocal legend says Zilwaukee's founders picked the name hoping German immigrants bound for Milwaukee would get off the boat here instead.
- History and cultureAn authentic Japanese tea house, in the middle of SaginawSaginaw's Japanese garden and tea house grew from its sister-city friendship with Tokushima, Japan.
- History and cultureFrom lumber capital to car-parts townSaginaw's history runs from white-pine lumber capital to General Motors factory town, with the Castle Museum telling the story downtown.
- History and cultureHow Bronner's became Frankenmuth's year-round Christmas landmarkBronner's CHRISTmas Wonderland grew from Wally Bronner's sign shop into Frankenmuth's year-round Christmas landmark.
- Money and taxesSaginaw has a city income tax — and it's on the higher sideThe city of Saginaw has a higher-tier Michigan city income tax for residents and nonresidents who work inside the city.
- History and cultureThe Real History Beneath Frankenmuth's Bavarian LookFrankenmuth's German roots date to 1845, but the Alpine-style Main Street visitors see today began taking shape in the late 1950s.
- History and cultureThe Zilwaukee Bridge and the town with the odd nameZilwaukee's high I-75 bridge solved a drawbridge bottleneck and became famous for a costly construction mishap.
- History and cultureHow Frankenmuth Became Michigan's Little BavariaFrankenmuth began as a German Lutheran mission colony in 1845; the Bavarian streetscape visitors know today took shape more than a century later.
- OutdoorsA great bird marsh where the rivers meetShiawassee National Wildlife Refuge protects a remnant of the Shiawassee Flats and is a major migratory-bird destination south of Saginaw.
- History and cultureStevie Wonder, Serena Williams, and a Pulitzer poet: Saginaw's famous kidsSaginaw'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 cultureThe Eastern White PineMichigan 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 propertyBig rivers meet here, so check the flood mapsSaginaw County's low river corridors can put homes in mapped flood zones, so buyers should check FEMA and county flood maps.
- Home and propertyThe Saginaw River cleanup, and the fish advisories downstreamDownstream Saginaw River and Saginaw Bay buyers should know about dioxin cleanup history, fish advisories, and floodplain sediment.
- Home and propertyOut in the county, you're on a well and septicMany rural Saginaw County township homes use private wells and septic systems, so buyers should ask for records and inspections.
- Outdoors10,000 wild acres on Saginaw's doorstep: the Shiawassee refugeThe 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 cultureWhen Saginaw was the lumber capital of the worldIn 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 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.