Where five rivers are born

Here’s something genuinely unusual about Hillsdale County: it sits up on a high ridge of land, and it’s the only one of Michigan’s eighty-three counties where five different major rivers all get their start. Because it’s the high point, water flows away from here in every direction — some of it ending up in Lake Michigan, the rest draining the other way toward Lake Erie.

The St. Joseph River that winds west to Lake Michigan begins right at Baw Beese Lake, on the edge of the city of Hillsdale. The Grand River — Michigan’s longest — starts up in the lakes near Somerset. The Kalamazoo River begins here too, as do the River Raisin and a second St. Joseph River, both of which head the other way toward Lake Erie. It’s the kind of fact that won’t change the price of a house, but it tells you something about this corner of the state: high, green, and dotted with the clean lakes and streams where all that water begins.