Scottville got its name on a coin flip

The town on US-10 east of Ludington was nearly named Sweetland. Its first namesake was a settler named James Sweetland, and the little crossroads carried his name until a scandal soured it — Sweetland reportedly walked out on his pregnant wife and left town, and the place needed a new identity in a hurry.

So two local businessmen settled it the frontier way. Hiram Scott and his partner met on the main corner of the village — the spot where the town’s lone stoplight stands today — and flipped a coin to decide whose name the town would take. Scott called it right. The crossroads became Scottville, and it has been Scottville ever since, incorporated as a city in the years that followed and growing into the eastern anchor of Mason County’s farm country.

The story has a wrinkle that locals still argue about. The official State of Michigan historical marker downtown names Charles Blaine as the man on the other side of the coin. But most accounts, and the descendants of a merchant named George Reader, insist it was Reader who lost the toss, not Blaine — and that Scott’s own widow told the Reader family the story herself, in their store, decades later. Either way, the coin landed Scott’s side up.

It’s a fittingly offhand origin for a town that never took itself too seriously. This is the home of the Scottville Clown Band, after all — a hundred-year-old parade act of grown adults in mismatched costumes blasting away on whatever instrument is loudest. Stand on the corner by the stoplight and you’re standing on the exact spot where a coin spun in the air and decided what to call the place.