County note shelf
Tuscola County Porch Notes
Stories, practical details, outdoor places, tax quirks, and local history connected to Tuscola County. This shelf has 9 practical notes and 23 local stories.
32 notes
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- Outdoors3,400 acres of game country that hunters paid forThe Vassar State Game Area covers about 3,400 acres of woods and Cass River bottomland — nearly all of it bought with hunters' own dollars, from license fees and a federal tax on firearms.
- OutdoorsA 37-mile paddle that earned a state designationThe Cass River Water Trail runs about 37.5 miles from above Vassar down to the Saginaw River, with rapids near Vassar and roughly 13 launch sites, and is a state-designated Pure Michigan Water Trail.
- History and cultureA little fieldstone bank that's now the town's museumMillington's 1890s bank, built of split fieldstone in a town of brick and frame, outlived the bank itself and now houses the Millington-Arbela Historical Society's museum.
- OutdoorsA lumber-camp dam that became a 2,500-acre hunting groundMurphy Lake near Millington was widened in the 1850s by a dam built to float logs; today the state game area around it spreads across roughly 2,500 acres of woods, marsh, and small lakes.
- History and cultureA town the railroad renamed, beside a village the Germans builtDenmark Township's first settlers were German Lutherans who founded Richville; a few miles off, a settlement first platted as Gates got renamed Reese in 1873 for a railroad superintendent.
- History and cultureAkron made cheese boxes before it made much elseAkron didn't become a village until a railroad arrived in 1882; the new town platted that year came with sawmills and a cheese-box factory, the kind of small industry that followed Thumb dairy farms.
- History and cultureAn eight-sided farmhouse a retired carpenter built for himselfNear Mayville, William Randall built a rare eight-sided house in 1870, following a fad that claimed octagon homes were healthier — and it still stands, on the National Register.
- History and cultureCass City, the Cass River, and the man behind both namesCass City and the river that runs past it both carry the name of Lewis Cass — the territorial governor who opened up early Michigan and nearly became president.
- History and cultureFairgrove crowns a Bean Queen and ladles out free soupEvery Labor Day weekend the village of Fairgrove throws the Michigan Bean Festival, one of the state's longest-running festivals — built entirely around the dry bean that the Thumb grows by the truckload.
- History and cultureHow Caro's state hospital changed over a centuryOpened in 1914 as the Caro Farm Colony for Epileptics, the campus was Michigan's only state residential center for people with seizure disorders until 1997. A new psychiatric hospital opened there in 2023.
- History and cultureMayville saved its old depot, then filled it with the town's memoryWhen Mayville's railroad depot faced demolition in 1986, residents moved it instead — and turned the old station into a museum of local history, obituaries, and a one-room schoolhouse cabin.
- Rules and licensesMost of Reese is in Tuscola County — but not quite all of itThe village of Reese sits almost entirely in Tuscola County's Denmark Township, with a small sliver crossing into Saginaw County — a county line that can matter for where official paperwork goes.
- History and cultureThe Cass City plant that puts fuel in engines worldwideWalbro, a global maker of carburetors and fuel systems for everything from chainsaws to outboards, has run its operations out of small-town Cass City since 1954.
- History and cultureThe man who paddled the county records to CaroIndian Dave, one of the last Chippewa to live the old way in Tuscola County, helped settle an 1866 county-seat fight by canoeing the county records to Caro; he is buried at Wisner Township Cemetery.
- History and cultureThe railroad that reached up into the Thumb made KingstonKingston, a small farm village in southern Tuscola County, grew up on the Pontiac, Oxford & Northern railroad — the same line, later part of the Grand Trunk, that opened the Thumb's interior.
- History and cultureThe store, the town hall, and the museum are all the same buildingAaron Watrous logged the Cass River valley, platted Watrousville in 1860, and built a general store that later served as the township hall and now holds the local museum.
- History and cultureThe Thumb town named for Cairo, Egypt — sort ofCaro, the seat of Tuscola County, was once plain old Centerville — until 1869, when town leaders borrowed a clipped spelling of Cairo, Egypt.
- History and cultureTuscola is a made-up word — and so are a dozen Michigan countiesThe name Tuscola wasn't an old Native place-name handed down by settlers. Henry Schoolcraft invented it in 1840, blending Ojibwe and Latin scraps into a word meaning, roughly, 'level cultivated land.'
- History and cultureTwo brothers from Canada, and the county's first Catholic churchGagetown grew where five roads met, platted in 1871 by a Canadian homesteader named Joseph Gage — and it's home to St. Agatha, the first Catholic parish in Tuscola County.
- History and cultureCaro's 1899 sugarbeet factory is still setting recordsCaro's Michigan Sugar factory has sliced beets since 1899, and the company says it is the oldest operating sugarbeet factory in the United States.
- History and cultureA logging town named for a college founderVassar grew up on Cass River logging and shares its namesake with Vassar College founder Matthew Vassar.
- History and cultureA sugar-beet town since 1899Caro's operating sugar factory, Tuscola County Fair, and row-crop economy keep its sugar-beet heritage visible.
- History and cultureThe Thumb's eight-sided barnNear Gagetown, the restored Thumb Octagon Barn preserves an eight-sided 1924 barn and a working farm museum.
- History and cultureVassar, the Cork Pine City — named for a college founder who never lived hereVassar took its name from Matthew Vassar of Vassar College fame and its nickname from the towering 'cork pine' that floated down the Cass River.
- Home and propertyLake levels and building near the waterTuscola County's level-controlled lakes and county drains make lake-level assessments and Drain Commissioner checks worth asking about before buying or building near water.
- Home and propertyThe Cass River, and Vassar's flood historyThe Cass River runs through Caro and Vassar, where flood history makes mapped flood zones and insurance worth checking before buying.
- Home and propertyWind country — turbines, leases, and who decidesIn Michigan's Thumb, wind turbines can affect rural land value, leases, views, local zoning, and state siting decisions.
- Home and propertyOut in the county, you're on a well and septic — under local rulesRural Tuscola County homes usually rely on private wells and septic systems under local county rules, with buyer-requested checks before closing.
- 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.
- History and cultureThe Thumb feeds America its beansMichigan's Thumb is the nation's powerhouse for navy and black beans, and Tuscola County farmland is at the heart of it.
- 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.