County note shelf
Shiawassee County Porch Notes
Stories, practical details, outdoor places, tax quirks, and local history connected to Shiawassee County. This shelf has 5 practical notes and 25 local stories.
30 notes
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- History and culture Bancroft took its name from a mining company The Shiawassee County village was platted when the railroad arrived in 1877, then took the unexpected name of the Bancroft Mining Company.
- History and culture Byron grew up around a dam, and took its name from a poet The village of Byron began in the 1830s when a company dammed the Shiawassee River for a sawmill, and it carries the name of the English Romantic poet Lord Byron.
- History and culture How a 600-person village in New Lothrop became a football giant New Lothrop, a Hazelton Township village of about 600, has won three Michigan high school football state titles — 2006, 2018, and 2020 — against schools many times its size.
- History and culture In Ovid you can change counties without leaving Main Street The city of Ovid straddles the Clinton–Shiawassee county line — most of town sits in Clinton, while its eastern edge crosses into Middlebury Township in Shiawassee.
- History and culture Owosso once built the world's caskets, 150 a day The Owosso Casket Company grew out of a Woodard brothers woodworking shop and, by the 1920s, was the largest casket maker in the world, turning out around 150 caskets a day.
- History and culture The circus train wreck that left a monument in a Durand cemetery On August 6, 1903, two Great Wallace Shows circus trains collided in the Durand rail yard when the brakes failed, killing about two dozen people and an elephant named Maud.
- History and culture The man who built Morrice wanted to name it after himself A railroad vice-president tried to name the new Shiawassee village Galesboro after himself; Michigan said no, so he named it Morrice for a Scottish farmer friend instead.
- History and culture The Shiawassee County Fair traces back to 1850 — and a profit of $81 Shiawassee County's agricultural fair goes back to an 1850 society in Corunna; it ran 53 years at McCurdy Park before moving to its current Hibbard Road grounds in 1988.
- Outdoors They took out the Shiatown Dam, and the Shiawassee runs free again A dam stood on the Shiawassee River at Shiatown from 1840 until a removal finished in 2019; the river now runs free past a county park, open to paddlers and anglers.
- History and culture Laingsburg spent eight years answering to 'Nebraska' A doctor's roadside tavern grew into Laingsburg, but for a stretch in the 1850s and '60s the village officially went by Nebraska before the railroad settled the name for good.
- History and culture Owosso means 'one bright spot' The city's name traces to Chief Wasso, an Ojibwe leader whose own name — by the legend on a marker downtown — meant the one remaining joy in a grieving father's life.
- History and culture Owosso's last brick street has been underfoot since 1906 Michigan Avenue in Owosso was paved with vitrified brick in 1906 — fired right up the road in Corunna — and it's the only brick street the city has left.
- History and culture The race track near Ovid that spent the war as a POW camp Owosso Speedway opened in 1939, went dark in 1944 to hold German prisoners of war, and came back roaring after V-E Day — and it's still racing today.
- History and culture Vernon, the village that borrowed its name from the township around it Platted in 1850 on a warm-water stretch of the Shiawassee River, the village of Vernon took its name from the township, ran on the railroad, and sent a familiar face to Hollywood.
- History and culture Durand throws a festival for the railroad every May A festival that began in 1975 with a single salvaged baggage car celebrates the town that grew up around one of Michigan's busiest railroad crossings.
- History and culture The 1800s village hiding inside Corunna's McCurdy Park Restored period buildings gathered along the Shiawassee River in Hugh McCurdy Park recreate small-town life before electricity, on land that once hosted the county fair.
- History and culture The town of Perry packed up and walked to the railroad When tracks laid in the 1870s ran past the original settlement, Perry shifted its whole center to meet them — and stayed on the map while neighbors that missed the line faded.
- History and culture What 'Shiawassee' means, and why the river came first The county borrowed its name from the river that winds through it — an Anishinaabe word handed down as 'sparkling' or 'rolling' waters, older than any town here.
- Outdoors Why a state park near Laingsburg is named Sleepy Hollow A naming feud between rival towns near Laingsburg ended when a former landowner's surname — Crane — handed the new state park a literary name.
- History and culture A Claire Allen courthouse on the square Corunna's Shiawassee County Courthouse is a Claire Allen-designed Classical Revival landmark on the public square.
- History and culture An author's castle and a presidential candidate's hometown Owosso is the hometown of adventure novelist James Oliver Curwood and presidential nominee Thomas E. Dewey.
- History and culture The "Queen of the Rails" Durand Union Station is a landmark railroad depot and the home of the Michigan Railroad History Museum.
- History and culture The real Polar Express lives here Owosso's Pere Marquette 1225 steam locomotive inspired The Polar Express and still pulls excursion trains.
- History and culture A Bestselling Author Built Himself a Little Castle in Small-Town Michigan Bestselling adventure novelist James Oliver Curwood built himself a fieldstone Norman chateau on the Shiawassee River in Owosso in the early 1920s.
- Home and property One of Michigan's biggest solar farms is here The Assembly Solar Project in Hazelton and Venice townships is one of Michigan's biggest solar farms, with long-term land leases and local siting context.
- Home and property No city income tax in Shiawassee County No Shiawassee County city taxes wages, but Flint, Lansing, and East Lansing all do — commuting out means paying that city's 0.5% nonresident rate.
- Home and property Out in the township, you're on a well and septic — and the county checks it when you sell Shiawassee County township homes often use private wells and septic systems, and the county requires septic inspection at sale or transfer.
- History and culture Owosso's castle and the Polar Express: Shiawassee's storybook side Shiawassee County's seat keeps a riverside writer's castle and the famous steam locomotive Pere Marquette 1225 — the engine behind the Polar Express.
- 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.