Shepherd: the village that named itself after the man who rebuilt it

Before it was Shepherd, the place was Salt River — named for the modest stream the first settlers built their sawmills along. A lumberman named Isaac Shepherd was among those early arrivals, and the post office opened under the Salt River name on August 8, 1857. The town got its plat in 1866 and grew the way Michigan lumber towns did, on pine and ambition.

The name changed because of where the railroad chose to put its depot. By 1885 the rails had reached the area, and the station landed on Isaac Shepherd’s land — so the railroad simply called it Shepherd. A Civil War veteran by then, Shepherd was expanding the village himself, and he gave the growing community his own surname. Salt River became a neighborhood inside it. The post office made it official on March 8, 1887.

Then, in 1887, fire nearly ended the story. Most of the village burned, but it was rebuilt fast and incorporated in 1889. Isaac Shepherd lived until 1925, dying at 86, and was buried in the Salt River Cemetery just south of the town that carries his name.

These days Shepherd is best known for its volunteer-run Maple Syrup Festival each spring, but the older story is still under your feet. The creek the founders followed still runs through Coe Township, and the man who put his name on the depot is resting a short drive south, in the cemetery named for the place this all started.