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History & Culture

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History & Culture notes

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Taylor was named for a war hero who'd never set foot in it Taylor Township was organized in 1847 and named for Zachary Taylor, then a celebrated Mexican-American War general and soon the 12th U.S. president — not for any local family.
The 1881 brick house that became the county's attic Gratiot County's historical museum lives in a red-brick Victorian on Ithaca's Center Street, built in 1881 and filled with a century of local life from the 1850s to the 1950s.
The 48 bells that ring over Allendale's campus Grand Valley State University's Cook Carillon Tower, built in 1994, holds 48 bronze bells cast in the Netherlands and rings out over the Allendale campus.
The Aetna Earthworks: two old rings on a gravel ridge A pair of circular earthen enclosures on a glacial ridge in Aetna Township, built around 1200 AD and now one of Missaukee County's two National Register sites.
The Alcona County Fair takes over a campground each August Every late August the Alcona County Fair fills the Alcona Recreation Area in Lincoln — a fairground that spends the rest of the year as a public campground.
The Alden depot that six railroad men saved on their days off Built in 1907 as the Pere Marquette's finest station north of Grand Rapids, Alden's lakeside depot survived its empty years as a railroaders' vacation clubhouse before becoming a township museum.
The architect's house that sits in its own pond Alden B. Dow built his Midland home and studio in the 1930s with a studio room sunk into the water; it is now a National Historic Landmark you can tour.
The Art Deco courthouse the oil boom helped build Gladwin's 1939 courthouse turned oil-boom revenue into an Art Deco county building whose stone panels and lobby floor tell local stories.
The Auburn Hills tower with a window shaped like a car logo Chrysler's Auburn Hills headquarters is one of the biggest office buildings in the country, crowned by a 249-foot tower with a giant window in the shape of the Pentastar logo.
The Belrockton: where Belding's silk girls slept The 1906 Belrockton on Hanover Street was the last of three company dormitories Belding Brothers built for the single young women who ran its silk mills; it is now the city museum.
The brothers who gave away the land the railroad rode in on Breckenridge took its name from two brothers, Daniel and Justin, who ran a sawmill and handed over their own land for the railroad bed and a school when the rails reached Gratiot County in 1872.
The building Alden Dow designed to make art and science argue Midland's arts center, designed by Alden B. Dow and opened in 1970, deliberately puts a science museum, art galleries, and a 1,500-seat hall under one roof.
The car named Oakland — for the county it was built in Before Pontiac, there was Oakland: a car company started in a Pontiac buggy factory in 1907 and named for Oakland County itself — until General Motors quietly erased the brand around 1931.
The Cass City plant that puts fuel in engines worldwide Walbro, a global maker of carburetors and fuel systems for everything from chainsaws to outboards, has run its operations out of small-town Cass City since 1954.
The Castle on Federal Avenue: a post office built like a French château Saginaw's Castle Museum lives in an 1898 federal post office designed to look like a French Renaissance château — a nod to the valley's fur-trapping French roots.
The cereal king's lake house became a war hospital, then a campus W.K. Kellogg built his summer Manor House on the highest point over Gull Lake in 1925-26, gave it to the military in WWII, and donated the whole estate to Michigan State in 1952.
The Cherry Bowl has shown summer movies since 1953 The Cherry Bowl opened along US-31 near Honor in 1953 and still pairs digital double features with original speaker posts and other drive-in details.
The Chesaning Showboat: a riverboat that played to the riverbank From 1937 to 2012, a showboat steamed down the Shiawassee River to a Chesaning amphitheater each summer, bringing big-name acts to a small town.
The chimney that survived Port Hope's mill fires The 1858 chimney at Stafford County Park survived two fires and successive versions of W. R. Stafford's sawmill; it is one of several historic mill stacks documented in Huron County, not Michigan's only one.
The Christmas parade made of glowing tractors Every December, Sandusky strings Christmas lights on combines and grain wagons and rolls them down Main Street in a farm-equipment parade that's run for over thirty years.
The circus train wreck that left a monument in a Durand cemetery On August 6, 1903, two Great Wallace Shows circus trains collided in the Durand rail yard when the brakes failed, killing about two dozen people and an elephant named Maud.
The City of Milwaukee carried railroad cars across Lake Michigan The 1931 City of Milwaukee carried loaded railroad cars across Lake Michigan and is the sole surviving pre-1940, classic-period Great Lakes car ferry.
The city that lumber barons drew on paper first Muskegon Heights wasn't a town that grew — it was platted in 1890 by a businessmen's syndicate that set aside land for factories, sold lots cheap, and lured in industry to replace dying lumber.
The college that turned itself Scottish Alma College opened in 1887 as a Presbyterian school, traded its 'Fighting Presbyterians' nickname for the Scots in 1931, and now pipes its graduates across the stage in kilts.
The company that built Buchanan, and the offices it left behind Clark Equipment grew from a free-rent startup into a Fortune 100 maker of axles, forklifts, and Bobcat loaders; its 1980s exit gutted Buchanan, but the offices are now on the National Register.
The country doctor's mansion that became a whole village Port Sanilac's Loop-Harrison mansion was built by a doctor who rode a 40-mile circuit on horseback; today his estate holds 17 historic buildings and a shipwreck room.
The county fair that's older than the county fairgrounds Van Buren County has held a fair of some kind since 1851; today's Van Buren Youth Fair runs on land in Hartford that was once the county poor farm.
The county hospital a banker's bequest started McKenzie Health System in Sandusky, the main hospital for rural Sanilac County, grew out of a 1959 gift from local banker Kenneth McKenzie and opened in 1967.
The county is named for a man who never set foot in it Gladwin County and its county seat carry the name of Major Henry Gladwin, the British officer who held Fort Detroit through Pontiac's five-month siege in 1763.
The county that was almost named Swan Kalkaska County started life in 1840 as Wabassee — the Ojibwe word for swan — before a state official's invented name stuck for good.
The day green ooze leaked onto I-696 in Madison Heights In December 2019 a bright yellow-green sludge of hexavalent chromium seeped onto eastbound I-696 in Madison Heights from a shut-down plating shop, kicking off a years-long state and federal cleanup.
The depot a town paid $15,000 to get Marlette's farmers raised $15,000 to lure the railroad in 1881; the 1890 depot they earned survives, restored, as the town's historical museum.
The Doherty Hotel and the night the oil money came due Clare's Doherty Hotel, open since 1924, was a Prohibition-era haunt of the Detroit Purple Gang — and the spot where an oil baron was shot dead at the bar in 1938.
The downtown ice rink with the year-2000 sky frozen under it Rosa Parks Circle in downtown Grand Rapids is a Maya Lin design called Ecliptic; fiber-optic lights set into the ice map the stars over the city at midnight on January 1, 2000.
The Eaton Theatre: a 1931 movie house Charlotte never let go of The Eaton Theatre on Cochran Avenue has shown movies in downtown Charlotte since 1931, opening with Eddie Cantor in 'Whoopee' under an Art Deco marquee that still glows.
The Edwardian ocean liner that spent 45 years docked in Douglas The SS Keewatin, a 1907 Great Lakes steamship, sat as a floating museum on the Kalamazoo River at Douglas from 1967 until it was towed home to Canada in 2012.
The Egyptian obelisks over an Ishpeming iron mine The Cliffs Shaft Mine needed working headframes in 1919. Because the site was so visible, the company made its two concrete towers worth looking at too.
The eight-sided house a Washington Township farmer built to outdo his neighbors Loren Andrus put up a brick eight-sided house in Washington Township in 1860, with a 55-step spiral staircase climbing all the way to the cupola — one of the finest octagon houses left in Michigan.
The farm the state forgot to tear down A German immigrant's 1850s farmstead near Grass Lake survived being swallowed by a state recreation area, and now stands as a museum of 19th-century farm life.
The farm widow who gave Southfield its downtown Before the glass towers, Southfield's center was a 19th-century crossroads called the Burgh — and the city's civic center exists because farmer Mary Thompson sold her land below market and willed away her farmhouse.
The Felt Mansion, built by the man who invented the adding machine Calculator millionaire Dorr Felt finished his brick summer mansion in Laketown Township in 1928; his wife died six weeks later, he died soon after, and the estate later served as a seminary and a prison.
The filmmaker who chased GM's CEO grew up in Davison Michael Moore grew up in Davison, won a Michigan school board seat at 18, and turned his hometown's auto-plant collapse into the 1989 documentary 'Roger & Me.'
The fire that gave the Red Cross its first job On September 5, 1881, a firestorm burned a million acres across the Thumb in a single day — and the new American Red Cross answered its first-ever disaster call here.
The first brick house in southern Michigan, with a room you weren't meant to find The Munro House in Jonesville, southern Michigan's first brick house, was a station on the Underground Railroad — and still has the hidden room where freedom seekers sheltered.
The first settler in Kalamazoo County put down roots on a round prairie Bazel Harrison moved his family to Prairie Ronde in 1828 as the first settler in what became Kalamazoo County, drawn by an open grassland so distinct the French had named it the round prairie.
The Flint concert hall named for the man who brought Buick to town The 2,043-seat Whiting Auditorium on Flint's Cultural Center campus, opened in 1967, is named for James H. Whiting — the wagon-maker who talked his partners into buying Buick and moving it to Flint.
The flour mill that ran Hillsdale for ninety years F.W. Stock bought a small Hillsdale gristmill in 1869 and grew it into one of the largest family-owned flour mills east of the Mississippi before Pillsbury took it over.
The Forest Festival, a Fourth of July that grew out of a homecoming Manistee's National Forest Festival, run every Fourth of July since 1936, started as a town homecoming and took its forest theme from the national forest land assembled around it in the 1930s.
The fountain that came to St. Joseph from a Chicago exposition The Maids of the Mist fountain reached St. Joseph in 1892 after serving as the centerpiece of Chicago's Interstate Industrial Exposition.
The Frankenmuth Woolen Mill: socks for the doughboys, still spinning Open on Main Street since 1894, the Frankenmuth Woolen Mill is Michigan's oldest working woolen mill — it once made 66,000 pairs of wool socks for WWI soldiers.
The French fishing villages at the end of the Garden Peninsula Sac Bay and Fairport, at the tip of the Garden Peninsula, were settled in the 1850s by French fishermen who left the offshore islands for the mainland to work the Bays de Noc.
The French general the county is named for Montcalm County is named for Louis-Joseph de Montcalm, the French general killed defending Quebec in 1759 — a man who never saw Michigan and died fighting the side that would later govern it.
The fur trader who settled Ada — and Kent County — before there was a Grand Rapids Rix Robinson set up a fur-trading post where the Thornapple meets the Grand River in 1821, becoming the first permanent settler of what would become Kent County.
The geared locomotive a Haring logger invented Ephraim Shay, a logger from Haring just north of Cadillac, patented a geared steam locomotive in 1881 that could haul logs up steep grades and around tight curves where ordinary engines failed.
The Genesee County Fair has run near Mount Morris since the mid-1800s Genesee County has held a fair since the mid-1800s, now staged on the 690-acre Cummings Center along the Flint River at Mount Morris — demolition derbies, livestock barns, and all.
The Grand Haven catwalk that townspeople refused to let rust away Grand Haven's south pier carries two red lights and an elevated catwalk that keepers once used in storms; locals raised the money to save it from demolition.
The Grand Rapids boy who flew to Apollo 1 — and the planetarium that carries his name Roger B. Chaffee, born in Grand Rapids in 1935, was one of three astronauts killed in the Apollo 1 fire; his hometown museum renamed its planetarium for him.
The granite castle a lumber baron built to hold books Charles Hackley spent over $200,000 of his timber fortune on a pink-granite Romanesque library that opened in downtown Muskegon in 1890 and still lends books today.
The green giant: GM's crossover plant in Delta Township GM's Lansing Delta Township Assembly opened in 2006 as the first manufacturing facility to achieve LEED Gold certification and now builds three crossover models.
The greenhouse that made a poet: Theodore Roethke's Saginaw home Pulitzer-winning poet Theodore Roethke grew up at 1805 Gratiot Avenue in Saginaw, behind his family's vast greenhouses — the 'heaven-on-earth' that shaped his most famous poems.

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