A college town with an oil-boom past

Two things shape Mount Pleasant’s identity. The first is Central Michigan University. Founded downtown in 1892 and now spread across a leafy 480-acre campus, CMU is a major public university and the city’s largest employer and cultural engine — bringing Division I college sports (the Chippewas play football at Kelly/Shorts Stadium), theater, concerts, and a lively student-town energy, along with the rental market and game-day bustle that come with a big university.

The second is oil. In 1928, a major strike in the fields around Mount Pleasant turned the city into a boomtown and earned it the nickname “the Oil Capital of Michigan.” (The famous discovery well was actually just east, in Midland County — but Mount Pleasant was the hub of the boom and is still considered the historical center of Michigan’s oil industry.) That heritage is baked into local identity: there’s an oil derrick right on the city seal, and the high school teams are the Oilers.

Add the Chippewa River winding through town — with a riverside trail and easy paddling — and you’ve got a small city that punches above its weight: part university town, part oil-country history, and the shopping-and-services hub for a wide rural area.