Edmore, where a realtor wrote his name on the map

There’s a real-estate man’s vanity baked right into the name. Edwin B. Moore platted the village in 1878 in the northeast corner of Montcalm County, and rather than name it for a river or a railroad man, he stitched his own name into it: Ed-more. The post office opened that July, the village incorporated the next year in 1879, and Moore made himself its first president. Few founders get to literally spell their name across a town and then run it.

Edmore started on timber, like most of this county. But once the pine was cut and the stumps pulled, the thing that grew best on the sandy plains around town wasn’t a second forest — it was potatoes. The light, well-drained soil suited them, and potato farming became the backbone of the local economy. The town leaned into the spud the way Greenville leaned into refrigerators.

That’s why, every September, Edmore still throws a Potato Festival. It is a small-town weekend in the fullest sense: a parade down the main drag, a car and tractor show, carnival rides, food, and — this being mid-Michigan — a demolition derby to cap it off. The potato is half the point and half the excuse; the real subject is a few thousand people setting aside a weekend to be in the same place at the same time and remember where the money used to come from.

If you go, watch for the kids hauling away more fried food than seems advisable and the old farmers eyeing the tractors. The festival lands in mid-to-late September, when the fields around town are about ready to give up their crop.