The Middle of the Mitten

If Michigan’s Lower Peninsula is shaped like a mitten, St. Louis is right in the middle of it. The city sits at the geographic center of the Lower Peninsula “as closely as can be determined,” and by local accounts a surveyor marked the spot with a stone as far back as 1876. In the 1950s the owners of the local newspaper campaigned to make it official, and the state agreed; a sign in Clapp Park along M-46 still proudly calls St. Louis the “Middle of the Mitten,” which is the city’s motto to this day.

St. Louis has a surprising claim to fame from even longer ago. In the late 1800s, people discovered mineral springs here whose water was thought to cure all sorts of ailments — it was even said to magnetize steel. The town boomed into a fashionable health resort sometimes called “the Saratoga of the West,” with bathhouses and a grand spa hotel that drew famous visitors, including the detective Allan Pinkerton and Civil War general Joseph “Fighting Joe” Hooker. The spa days are long gone and the magnetic well has been capped, but you can still see handsome old buildings downtown from that era.

Today St. Louis is a small, friendly city on the Pine River, with parks, a riverwalk, and easy reach to just about anywhere in the state. The St. Louis Area Historical Society keeps the town’s colorful history — springs and all.