Pinconning: Michigan's Cheese Capital

Michigan has exactly one cheese named after one of its towns, and this is the town. In 1915, German immigrant Dan Horn — a Wisconsin-trained cheesemaker — started making a creamy, Colby-style cheese on his farm just outside Pinconning. Aged anywhere from mild to a sharp, crumbly “super aged,” Pinconning cheese became a Michigan staple, and the town became, officially and proudly, the Cheese Capital of Michigan.

The best part is that it stayed in the family. Horn’s daughter Inez opened Wilson’s Cheese Shoppe in 1939 — now Michigan’s oldest cheese store — and another daughter, Marie, founded the Pinconning Cheese Company in 1948. Both shops still anchor the strip through town, selling cheese aged up to a decade alongside fudge and smoked meats, and no Up North road trip on the old US-23 route is complete without stopping for a brick of sharp. Small town, real claim to fame.