Hillsdale: the college on the hill and the roof of southern Michigan

Hillsdale County is named honestly: this is the roof of southern Michigan, where the land swells into glacial hills high enough that three river systems — the St. Joseph, the Kalamazoo’s headwaters country, and the River Raisin — all begin within its borders. The county’s farms roll rather than stretch, its lakes tuck into kettles, and its back roads are quietly some of the best Sunday drives in the southern Lower Peninsula.

The county seat grew up around Hillsdale College, founded in 1844 and nationally known today — among the first American colleges to prohibit discrimination by race or sex in its charter, a point of deep local pride, and the campus’s hilltop Central Hall is the postcard. The college’s most beloved early student was Will Carleton, the farm-poet whose verses made him a national celebrity; Michigan still marks Will Carleton Day each October in his honor. College-town energy in a town of 8,000, surrounded by the highest, prettiest farm country in the region: Hillsdale is the corner of Michigan that travelers keep being surprised by.