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History & Culture, page 4
Michigan has stories you won't find anywhere else — shipwrecks that became songs, a sound that started in Detroit, a war fought over Toledo. Pull up a chair for the history and culture of the Great Lakes State.
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The Dexter Cider Mill: Michigan's oldest, pressing cider since 1886
The Dexter Cider Mill has pressed cider on the Huron River since 1886 and still uses an old-fashioned oak rack press.
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The Grand Rapids Chicks: women's pro baseball
The Grand Rapids Chicks played women's professional baseball from 1945 to 1954 and won two league championships.
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The Gun Lake Tribe and Gun Lake Casino
The Gun Lake Tribe is based in Wayland Township, and Gun Lake Casino has become a major Allegan County employer and regional destination.
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The heart of Michigan's wine country
Berrien County sits at the heart of the Lake Michigan Shore wine region, where lake-effect climate supports vineyards and fruit farms.
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The Lowell Showboat
Lowell's riverfront showboat began as a Depression-era variety show and now carries both community pride and a hard history.
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The Medical Mile: how Grand Rapids became a research hub
Grand Rapids' Medical Mile turned a stretch of Michigan Street into a major hospital, research, and medical-school corridor.
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The Michigan State Capitol: a domed landmark you can tour for free
Michigan's 1879 State Capitol is a free-to-tour National Historic Landmark and the working center of state government.
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The Packard Proving Grounds
The Packard Proving Grounds in Shelby Township preserves part of a luxury automaker's 1928 test track and grounds.
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The Whitecaps: minor-league baseball (and a 4,800-calorie burger)
The West Michigan Whitecaps bring Tigers prospects, summer baseball, and famously over-the-top ballpark food to the Grand Rapids area.
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The Ypsilanti Water Tower: 1890 landmark on the city's highest hill
Ypsilanti's 1890 limestone water tower is a National Register landmark, a local icon, and a famously suggestive piece of civic infrastructure.
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There are miles of old mine tunnels under Grand Rapids
Old gypsum mine tunnels run under parts of Grand Rapids, Wyoming, and Grandville, and some are still used for storage.
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Three Rivers, where three rivers meet
Three Rivers is named for the meeting of the St. Joseph, Rocky, and Portage rivers, with a historic downtown and St. Gregory's Abbey.
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Warren's tank plant: the Arsenal of Democracy
Warren's Detroit Arsenal Tank Plant was the first U.S. factory built to mass-produce tanks and remains tied to Army vehicle work.
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Why Eastpointe used to be called 'East Detroit'
Eastpointe was once called East Detroit, and its 1992 name change carried both identity and border-city context.
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Why Holland is so Dutch — tulips, a windmill, and an 1847 beginning
Holland's Dutch identity traces to its 1847 founding, Tulip Time, and De Zwaan, the working Dutch windmill on Windmill Island.
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Why Mason, not Lansing, is the county seat
Mason remains Ingham County's county seat, making Michigan unusual because Lansing is a state capital that is not a county seat.
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Why so many things in Grand Rapids are named DeVos and Van Andel
The DeVos and Van Andel names are all over Grand Rapids because two local friends built Amway and became major philanthropists.
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Willow Run: where Rosie the Riveter built bombers
Willow Run mass-produced B-24 bombers during World War II and helped make Rosie the Riveter a national symbol.
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Zeeland: a tiny Dutch town that builds world-famous things
Zeeland's Dutch roots run deep, and the small city is home to major design and manufacturing names like MillerKnoll, Gentex, and Howard Miller.
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'Midnight' — Detroit's Secret Code Name on the Road to Freedom
On the Underground Railroad, Detroit was code-named 'Midnight' — the last dark stop before the 'Dawn' of freedom across the river in Canada.
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'Shipwreck Alley' — Where You Can See Sunken Ships Without Getting Wet
Off Alpena, Lake Huron's 'Shipwreck Alley' holds nearly 200 wrecks, preserved in cold fresh water and protected as the only marine sanctuary in the Great Lakes.
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"Beer City, USA" Is in Michigan — and the Best Beer in America Has a Fish on the Label
Grand Rapids is "Beer City, USA," and Bell's Two Hearted Ale was voted the best beer in America four years running.
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"Runaway": A Coopersville Carpet Salesman's Worldwide #1
Del Shannon — born Charles Westover, raised in Coopersville — turned his 1961 song 'Runaway' into a #1 hit on both sides of the Atlantic.
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A $10,000 Bet on Pizza Built a Detroit Empire
Mike and Marian Ilitch bet their $10,000 life savings on a Garden City pizza shop in 1959 — and Little Caesars money later bought the Red Wings and Tigers.
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A 110-Room Tudor Castle Built by One of the Richest Women in the World
A 110-room Tudor castle near Detroit, built in the 1920s by Matilda Dodge Wilson — once among the world's richest women — who later founded Oakland University.
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A B-24 Bomber Rolled Out of a Michigan Plant Every Single Hour
At Ypsilanti's mile-long Willow Run plant, Ford built B-24 bombers on an assembly line — nearly one an hour — and helped give the world Rosie the Riveter.
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A Bestselling Author Built Himself a Little Castle in Small-Town Michigan
Bestselling adventure novelist James Oliver Curwood built himself a fieldstone Norman chateau on the Shiawassee River in Owosso in the early 1920s.
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A Communist Painted America's Greatest Mural Cycle — and an Auto Baron Paid for It
Diego Rivera, a committed communist, painted the Detroit Industry murals — what many call the finest mural in America — for Edsel Ford at the Detroit Institute of Arts in 1932-33.
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A Factory Worker Turned Detroit's Hastings Street Into a #1 Record
Bluesman John Lee Hooker came to Detroit for factory work, played the Hastings Street clubs at night, and turned his sound into the 1949 #1 hit 'Boogie Chillen'.
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A Fort Where History Is Literally Being Dug Up, Summer After Summer
A reconstructed 1715 French fort under the Mackinac Bridge, sitting atop one of North America's longest-running archaeological digs — active every summer since 1959.
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A Giant Weathervane Crowned by a Ship That "Came Home"
Montague's 48-foot weathervane, the largest in the U.S., is topped by a model of a lumber schooner whose nameplate drifted home across Lake Michigan after she wrecked in 1901.
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A Homesick Judge Built a Hawaiian Mansion in Small-Town Michigan
A homesick former judge who'd served as U.S. Consul to Hawaii built the tropical Honolulu House in Marshall, Michigan, in 1860.
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A Little Slice of Bavaria in the Middle of Michigan
A Bavarian-themed town founded by German Lutheran immigrants in 1845, now famous for its glockenspiel, covered bridge, and the country's largest chicken-dinner restaurants.
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A Michigan UFO Sighting Got So Big That a Future President Demanded a Congressional Hearing
In March 1966, UFO sightings near Dexter and Hillsdale drew Walter Cronkite, an Air Force "swamp gas" explanation, and a congressional-hearing demand from a young Gerald Ford.
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A Newspaper Family Turned Their Estate Into One of the World's Great Design Schools
The Booth newspaper family turned their Bloomfield Hills estate into Cranbrook — a 300-acre campus designed by Eliel Saarinen and one of the most influential places in American design.
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A Self-Taught Builder Made Two Dozen "Hobbit Houses" Out of Beach Boulders
In Charlevoix, self-taught builder Earl Young spent some fifty years making about thirty curving, boulder-walled 'Mushroom Houses' that exist nowhere else on Earth.
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A Whole 1800s Town, Frozen in Time on a Lake Michigan Cliff
An entire 1800s iron-smelting company town on the remote Garden Peninsula, abandoned in 1891 and so well-preserved it's one of America's best ghost towns.
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A Whole Block of Detroit Is a Polka-Dotted Outdoor Art Museum
Detroit's Heidelberg Project turned a blighted east-side street into a world-famous outdoor art environment of polka dots and salvaged objects.
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America's First 'Walking Mall' Was a Michigan Experiment
Kalamazoo opened America's first outdoor pedestrian shopping mall in 1959 — designed, ironically, by the inventor of the enclosed mall.
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An 18th-Century Dutch Windmill Got On a Boat and Moved to Michigan
De Zwaan, the only authentic working Dutch windmill in the U.S., was shipped from the Netherlands to Holland, Michigan in 1964 and dedicated in 1965.
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Barry Sanders: The Most Exciting Lion of All
For ten seasons the most electrifying runner in football played in Detroit — then walked away, near his peak, just shy of the all-time record.
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Beaver Island and Its Self-Crowned King
In the 1850s the largest island in Lake Michigan was ruled by an actual crowned king — until his violent end and the gunpoint expulsion that followed.
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Better Made: Detroit's Last Chip Standing
The last of Detroit's twenty-plus hometown chip makers, still frying on Gratiot Avenue since 1930.
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Bob Seger Was Michigan's Biggest Rock Star Before the Rest of the Country Noticed
Bob Seger packed Detroit arenas for years as a hometown hero before his 1976 live album, recorded at Cobo Hall, finally broke him nationwide.
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Carhartt Started in a Detroit Loft in 1889
Carhartt, the rugged workwear brand, started in a small Detroit loft in 1889 and is still family-owned and based in metro Detroit today.
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Corn Flakes Were Invented at a Michigan Health Spa Run by an Eccentric Doctor
Corn flakes were born at a quirky Battle Creek health spa run by Dr. John Harvey Kellogg — and helped turn the city into 'Cereal City.'
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Cudighi: The U.P.'s Sweet-Spiced Secret
The U.P.'s sweet-spiced Italian sausage sandwich — a Marquette County staple that Italy itself wouldn't recognize.
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Detroit Has a Skyscraper Locals Call "the Largest Art Object" in the City
The Fisher Building, Detroit's golden-topped 1928 Art Deco landmark by Albert Kahn, is known as the city's 'largest art object.'
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Detroit Has an Island Park Bigger Than Central Park (Designed by the Same Guy)
Belle Isle, Detroit's 982-acre island park, is bigger than Central Park and designed by the same architect — with the country's oldest aquarium and conservatory.
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Detroit's 'Red Dwarf' — the Goblin Blamed for 300 Years of Bad Luck
Detroit's Nain Rouge — a 'red dwarf' said to appear before disaster since Cadillac's day — is folklore, and now has its own springtime parade.
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Detroit's Grand Train Station Came Back From the Dead
Detroit's grand 1913 train station sat abandoned for 30 years as a symbol of the city's decline — until Ford spent roughly $950 million restoring it, reopening in June 2024.
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Eddie Tolan: Detroit's Midnight Express
Detroit's bespectacled Midnight Express won double sprint gold at the 1932 Olympics and became the first African American called the world's fastest human.
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Eloise: The Asylum That Was Once Its Own City
Eloise began as the 1839 Wayne County Poorhouse and grew into a self-contained city of 75 buildings and 10,000 patients — now a famous haunted attraction.
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Faygo Started as Cake Frosting — Really
Faygo's flavors started life as cake frosting — reworked into pop by two immigrant bakers in 1907 Detroit.
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Fielding Yost and the Little Brown Jug
Fielding Yost's point-a-minute Wolverines and a 30-cent water jug gave college football its oldest trophy.
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Five Million Tulips Bloom in One Michigan Town Every May
Holland, Michigan throws the longest-running tulip festival in the U.S. — five million-plus tulips every May, a tradition begun in 1929.
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Flint's Grand Funk Railroad Sold Out Shea Stadium Faster Than the Beatles
Grand Funk Railroad, a hard-rock trio from Flint, sold out Shea Stadium in 72 hours in 1971 — faster than the Beatles had.
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For a Few Electric Years, a Detroit Dance Hall Was Rock's Wildest Room
For a few electric years in the late 1960s, Detroit's Grande Ballroom — home of the MC5 — was one of the wildest, most important rooms in rock.
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George Gipp: The Gipper from Laurium
The Gipper from Laurium became Notre Dame's first All-American — and the source of the most famous deathbed line in sports, true or not.
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Gordie Howe and the Making of Hockeytown
Mr. Hockey gave Detroit its claim to Hockeytown: 25 seasons, four Stanley Cups, and a career that somehow stretched to age 52.
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Grand Island: A Tycoon's Private Kingdom on Lake Superior
For ninety years, 13,500 acres off Munising were one iron magnate's private kingdom; today it's a wild National Recreation Area.
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Henry Ford Moved Thomas Edison's Actual Laboratory to Michigan — Brick by Brick
Henry Ford moved Thomas Edison's actual Menlo Park laboratory to Michigan, brick by brick, and had a frail Edison relight his lamp there in 1929.
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High Island and the House of David
A celibate religious commune, a potato farm, and unmarked graves on a remote, now-empty island four miles off Beaver Island.
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Houdini's Last Trick Was in Detroit — and It Killed Him
Harry Houdini gave his final performance at Detroit's Garrick Theatre in 1926, then died on Halloween of a ruptured appendix at Grace Hospital.
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How 'Yooper' Made It Into the Dictionary
It took one Yooper more than a decade of letters (and a few pasties) to get the word 'Yooper' into the dictionary.
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How a Tiny Island Became the "Fudge Capital of the World"
Mackinac Island is the "Fudge Capital of the World," a tradition the Murdick family started in 1887 with marble-slab fudge and aroma-fans.
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How Close Am I to Water in Michigan, Really?
You're never more than six miles from an inland lake or stream in Michigan — and never more than 85 miles from a Great Lake. Both are true at once.
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How Do You Actually Pronounce "Mackinac"?
Mackinac — the bridge, island, and straits — is pronounced MACK-in-aw, with a silent 'c,' thanks to a French respelling of an Ojibwe name. Here's the rule for Michigan's tricky place names.
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How Many Great Lakes Does Michigan Actually Touch?
Michigan touches four of the five Great Lakes (everything but Ontario) — the only state that does — and Lake Michigan is the only Great Lake entirely inside the U.S.
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How Northern Michigan Made Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Hemingway spent his boyhood summers at the family's Windemere cottage on Walloon Lake, and northern Michigan shaped his early fiction.
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How One Michigan Town Became the Cereal Capital of the World
How a feud — the Kellogg brothers' split and C.W. Post's rival empire — turned Battle Creek into the self-proclaimed 'Cereal City.'
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Hush Puppies Were Born in a Small Michigan Town — and Named After Fried Dough
Hush Puppies — the soft suede casual shoe — were born in 1958 in Rockford, Michigan, and named after the fried dough that quiets barking dogs.
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