Manton: the town that lost the county seat in a raid

For one strange morning in 1882, this small city at the north end of Wexford County held the county seat — and then a trainload of armed lumbermen rolled in and carried it off to Cadillac, in what people still call the Battle of Manton.

Here’s how it went. The two rivals, Cadillac and Sherman, had been fighting for years over which town would be the county’s seat of government. In 1881 they struck a compromise and parked it in Manton, right in the middle. But Cadillac wasn’t done. In a countywide vote in April 1882, Cadillac won the seat outright — and the morning after, a sheriff’s posse rolled into Manton on a special train to haul away the county records. An angry crowd ran them off. So the sheriff came back with a few hundred lumbermen, a supply of whiskey, and a brass band, broke through the courthouse doors and windows, grabbed the records, and carried them off to Cadillac. Cadillac won, but the raid left bruises and bad blood that took years to fade.

Manton settled into a quieter life after that. It started out as a railroad town — folks first called the spot Cedar Creek, before the new station was named for an early postmaster — and today it’s a farming community known for the old Manton Depot, the Manton Pathway, and an annual Harvest Festival. The trout streams, trails, and state forest all around make it a favorite jumping-off point for people who’d rather be outdoors.