Lake City: Michigan's Christmas Tree Capital

Lake City sits on the eastern shore of Lake Missaukee, a wide, clear lake that the first settlers knew as Muskrat Lake. The town got its start as a lumber camp in the late 1800s, and when the big pine was gone it reinvented itself twice over — first as a summer resort town, and then as the center of one of Michigan’s signature crops: Christmas trees.

Lake City bills itself as Michigan’s Christmas Tree Capital, and it has earned the name. The well-drained, sandy hills the loggers left behind turned out to be ideal for growing evergreens, and after World War II the county filled up with Christmas-tree farms. Michigan now trails only Oregon and North Carolina in Christmas trees grown, and Missaukee County is one of the state’s biggest producers. The town celebrates that heritage every fall at the Festival of the Pines, and it throws one of the region’s best Fourth of July parties — the “Greatest Fourth in the North” — when the summer crowds are at their peak.

Between the lake, the surrounding state forest, and the tree farms, this is a green, four-season corner of Michigan: boating and fishing in summer, color tours in fall, snowmobiling and ice fishing once the snow flies.