Mio: the heart of Oscoda County

Mio is the county seat and the main town of Oscoda County — though, like everywhere else in the county, it’s an unincorporated community, not an official city. It sits right on the Au Sable River where M-33 and M-72 meet, and it’s where you’ll find most of the county’s everyday services: the county offices and courts, the K-12 Mio-AuSable school, shops and restaurants, and the local weekly newspaper.

The town’s landmark for over a century was the 1888 Oscoda County Courthouse, a white wood-frame building with a steeple that was one of the oldest of its kind in Michigan — until it was lost to a fire in 2016. A new courthouse was built on the same downtown block and opened in 2020. Out front stands the glass-encased monument to the Kirtland’s warbler, dedicated decades ago as one of the first monuments anywhere to a songbird. The county fair — the Oscoda County Fair and Forestry Exposition, a nod to the area’s deep logging roots — is one of the year’s big gatherings.

One bit of local trivia: Mio holds the record for the hottest temperature ever measured in Michigan, 112 degrees back in July 1936. For day-to-day living, Mio is the practical center of a very rural county — the place you’ll come for groceries, the bank, school, and county business.