Yes, There's a Town in Michigan Actually Named Hell

You really can tell someone to “go to Hell” and hand them a map. Hell is a real (unincorporated) community in Livingston County, about 15 miles northwest of Ann Arbor. It was settled in 1838 by a man named George Reeves, who ran a gristmill, a general store, and a whiskey distillery, and the name became official on October 13, 1841.

So how did it get the name? Nobody’s 100% sure, and the theories are half the fun. One holds that a pair of German travelers stepped off a stagecoach on a bright day in the 1830s and exclaimed “So schön hell!” — German for “so beautifully bright!” — and locals latched onto that last word. Another says Reeves paid local farmers for their grain in homemade whiskey, so when wives were asked where their husbands had gotten to, they’d grumble that they’d “gone to Hell again.” A third story claims that when officials asked Reeves what to name the place, he shrugged and said, “I don’t care. You can name it Hell for all I care.” And a fourth blames the swampy, mosquito-infested, hard-to-tame land the early settlers found.

Today Hell leans all the way into the joke. There’s a general store selling devilish souvenirs, you can get “married in Hell,” and for a fee you can be crowned “Mayor of Hell” for a day — only to be cheerfully impeached by sundown. And yes, when winter hits sub-zero, locals love to say Hell has frozen over.