Marvel Secord, Dick's Fork, and the township that carries his name

This story needs a careful first sentence. Secord Township’s own history says Ojibwe, or Chippewa, people lived in the area before Europeans arrived, and it also notes Sauk and Menominee presence. Marvel Secord was not the first person here.

In the county’s Euro-American settlement story, though, local government histories put Secord and his family at the beginning. Gladwin County says they canoed up the Tittabawassee River to the mouth of the Sugar River in 1861. The township calls Secord the area’s first white settler and says he built a log house nine miles from Gladwin at Dick’s Fork in 1864. Its account says the place was named for a Mr. Dixon.

The same township history describes Secord as a hunter and trapper who provided meals and lodging to early lumbermen. The county says lumber towns did not arrive until the 1880s, so his family was there before the logging boom reshaped the area.

The area around Dick’s Fork later became known as Secord, and a rural post office opened there in 1912. Secord Township’s history says the township was officially recognized that same year. The name is still on the township, the lake, and the map; the important part is remembering that its settlement story did not begin with an empty landscape.