A logging town named for a college founder

Vassar was born on the Cass River in 1849, when a handful of men picked the spot to build a dam and start a town. They named it after the uncle of one of the founders — Matthew Vassar, a New York brewer who, about a decade later, founded Vassar College. So this little Thumb town and the famous women’s college share a name and a namesake.

For its first thirty years or so, Vassar ran on timber. The Cass River valley was full of towering white pine — the tall, straight “cork pine” that was prized for building — and Vassar’s mills cut millions of board feet that were shipped off across the country. Vassar was even the county’s first seat of government, before it lost that title around 1860. When the big pine ran out, the town turned to farming and small manufacturing, which is roughly what it still does. A lot of the 19th-century downtown is still standing, and the town throws a RiverFest on the Cass each year.