Why everyone's moving to Ottawa County

Michigan’s population map has one consistent bright spot, and it’s Ottawa County: for years it has ranked as the fastest-growing county in the state, and the reasons aren’t mysterious. The west edge is Lake Michigan at its best — Grand Haven’s boardwalk and musical fountain, Holland’s tulip-lined streets and Big Red lighthouse, miles of sugar-sand state park beach. The east side runs to the Grand River valley and a booming ring of communities — Hudsonville, Jenison, Allendale and its university, Zeeland — that keep topping lists for schools, safety, and family life.

The texture in between is what converts visitors into residents: the Dutch heritage that gives Holland its Tulip Time festival each May and the area its work ethic legend, farm markets and celery-black soil, an exploding network of bike paths along the rivers and shoreline, and church-and-pancake-breakfast civic life that newcomers report is actually real. Growth has its headaches — ask anyone about traffic on Chicago Drive — but as Michigan stories go, “the secret got out” is a good problem. Ottawa County is the proof.