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History & Culture

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History & Culture notes

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The town that invented the pet casketHoegh of Gladstone made the first pet casket sold in America, started in a basement in 1966, and still ships little styrene coffins for everything from a parakeet to a St. Bernard.
The university in Berrien Springs that started in Battle CreekAndrews University moved to Berrien Springs in 1901 as Emmanuel Missionary College, the Seventh-day Adventist school that began as Battle Creek College in 1874 and took its current name in 1960.
The village that went from Hall's Corners to Farmers to CarsonvilleCarsonville changed its name three times in thirty years — from a log store called Hall's Corners, to a post office named Farmers, to the name of the hotel keeper who put it on the map.
The village where Main Street is the county lineIn Casnovia, the north-south Main Street runs right along the Muskegon–Kent county boundary, so the little village sits in two counties and two townships at once.
The Vlasic pickle empire was born on Blacks Corners RoadVlasic's first dedicated plant opened in Imlay City in 1957, when Joseph Vlasic bought a small pickle works on Blacks Corners Road — the site that grew into one of America's best-known pickle brands.
The Vogue Theatre, a 1938 movie house the town rebuilt by handManistee's Art Deco Vogue opened in 1938, went dark in 2005, and reopened in 2013 after the town raised the money and hundreds of neighbors put in volunteer hours.
The water-filter vacuum built in CadillacRexair has built the Rainbow Cleaning System — the vacuum that filters dust through a basin of water instead of a bag — at its Cadillac plant since the late 1960s.
The Watervliet mill that made the cards in your deckFor most of the 20th century a paper mill on the Paw Paw River in Watervliet made the glossy coated stock behind Sears catalog covers, postage stamps, and millions of playing cards.
The Wayland library a widow paid for with her willWayland's stone library on Main Street was built in 1900 from a $2,000 bequest left by Julia Henika, who died wanting her town to have a place to read.
The Whaley House, where a $2,000 loan helped start General MotorsA banker in this Victorian house on Flint's Kearsley Street lent Billy Durant the seed money that grew into General Motors; the home is now a museum on the same street.
The widow who kept the light at Pointe aux BarquesWhen keeper Peter Shook drowned in 1849, his widow Catherine took over the light at the tip of the Thumb — becoming Michigan's first woman lighthouse keeper.
The Wilson Barn: Livonia's last reminder it was once dairy countryThe Wilson Barn in Livonia is a rebuilt 1919 bank barn from the Ira Wilson dairy farm, run on land the family had owned since 1847 and grown into a leading creamery.
The Witch's Hat: South Lyon's train depot got its name from its roofA 1909 Grand Trunk depot in South Lyon, named for its pointed conical roof, was saved in 1976, rolled to a park, and now anchors a small historic village.
The world's modern office chair was born in a Zeeland bedroom-furniture shopHerman Miller started in 1905 as Zeeland's Star Furniture, making ornate wooden bedrooms — until the Depression pushed it toward the modern designs that reshaped how the world works.
The yellow sandstone courthouse with faces in the stoneHillsdale's 1899 county courthouse, designed by Claire Allen in local yellow sandstone, carries human and lion faces carved into its arcade and a clock tower over the town.
There was a roller coaster on Lake Lansing for forty yearsThe county beach at Lake Lansing in Haslett was once a full amusement park with a coaster and a dance hall — and the old carousel building still stands as a reminder.
There's a layer of Michigan rock named after Reed CityThe biggest single oil strike of 1940s Michigan was the Reed City field, spread across Osceola and Lake counties — productive enough that geologists named a rock layer the Reed City formation.
Thirty-two rooms and eight marble fireplaces in JonesvilleThe 1874 Grosvenor House in Jonesville was built by a Michigan lieutenant governor and designed by the architect of the State Capitol; it is now a museum of thirty-two rooms.
Three missionaries, a crooked creek, and the start of SebewaingIn 1845, three Lutheran missionaries arrived on Saginaw Bay to live among the Chippewa — and the old mission house they left behind is now a museum in Sebewaing.
Tiger Woods won here: Warwick Hills and the Buick OpenWarwick Hills in Grand Blanc Township hosted Michigan's only regular PGA Tour stop, the Buick Open, for decades — and the tour came back for a Champions event in 2018.
Trent the Trout: Kalkaska's 17-foot fish fountainA 17-foot brook trout has leapt out of a fountain in downtown Kalkaska since 1966, a roadside landmark sculpted from a real frozen fish.
Trenton: named for the rock that became Arm & Hammer baking sodaTrenton took its name from Trenton limestone quarried along the Detroit River, and one local quarry's stone was cooked into baking soda sold under a name still in every kitchen — Arm & Hammer.
Trowbridge Dam sent power 24 miles to KalamazooIn 1899, a 22,000-volt line carried power 24 miles from Trowbridge Dam to Kalamazoo. Today, the dam sits inside an active PCB cleanup.
Trufant's fences made of pine stumpsDanish farmers around Trufant tipped white-pine stumps together into livestock fences; century-old stretches could still be seen in the area in the 1970s.
Tuscola is a made-up word — and so are a dozen Michigan countiesThe name Tuscola wasn't an old Native place-name handed down by settlers. Henry Schoolcraft invented it in 1840, blending Ojibwe and Latin scraps into a word meaning, roughly, 'level cultivated land.'
Tustin began as New Blekinge, a Swedish colony built around a railroadThe tiny village of Tustin started in the 1870s as New Blekinge, a Swedish settlement recruited from across the Atlantic by a railroad that wanted track-builders and gave away land to get them.
Two brothers from Canada, and the county's first Catholic churchGagetown grew where five roads met, platted in 1871 by a Canadian homesteader named Joseph Gage — and it's home to St. Agatha, the first Catholic parish in Tuscola County.
Two railroad towns, two names: how Nadeau and Carney got theirsBruno Nadeau farmed the first land here and his sons cut railroad ties; the township took his name, while nearby Carney was named for a man who built a warehouse at the tracks.
Two sisters who left their whole house to MichiganAn 1880s Victorian home in Concord froze in time when its two unmarried owners willed it — and everything inside — to the people of Michigan, now a state historic site.
Ubly's name arrived without its second eResidents proposed Ubley for their new post office. The approved name came back from Washington as Ubly, and the shorter spelling stayed.
Utica was once called Hog HollowBefore New York transplants gave it a dignified name, the Clinton River settlement that became Utica went by McDougalville, Hog Hollow, and Harlow.
Vermontville's Opera House: a town hall with a stage upstairsFinished in 1896, the Vermontville Opera House packs a library, township offices, and a real upstairs theater into one mansard-roofed brick building on the National Register.
Vogel Center: an early Dutch farm settlementDutch families established Vogel Center in the late 1860s, while farming and logging were both beginning to reshape Missaukee County.
Wacousta started as a mill town on the Looking GlassThe little crossroads of Wacousta in Watertown Township began in 1837 as a speculative mill venture on the Looking Glass River, before northern Lower Michigan was much settled at all.
Walker became a city to keep Grand Rapids from eating itWalker, a Kent County township since 1837, rushed to incorporate as a city in 1962 to stop Grand Rapids from annexing its industrial land piece by piece.
Walkerville and the little three-foot railroadWalkerville sat at the busy end of the Mason and Oceana, a narrow three-foot logging railroad that hauled the county's timber to a Ludington sawmill from 1887 until the trains stopped in 1909.
Walled Lake danced to the big bands, then burned on ChristmasFrom 1919 into the 1960s, the Casino dance pavilion on Walled Lake drew big-band crowds and an amusement park to its shore — until a Christmas Day fire ended the music.
Watervale: a ghost lumber town that became a summer resortWatervale, a 1890s lumber village on Lower Herring Lake in Blaine Township, was nearly abandoned before a Chicago doctor bought the whole town in 1917 and ran it as a resort.
Webster's 1871 town hall got moved across the cornfieldsWebster Township's 1871 town hall — one of Michigan's oldest in continuous use — was hauled three-quarters of a mile across farm fields in 1997 to save it.
West Branch's Victorian Art Fair, in a park named for an old familyEach August, West Branch fills Irons Park with hundreds of artists for the Victorian Art Fair, a free, period-themed festival tied to the town's preserved Victorian downtown.
West Michigan's airport sits in Cascade Township — and is named for a hometown presidentGerald R. Ford International Airport opened in Cascade Township in 1963 as Kent County Airport, and took the name of Grand Rapids' own president, the 38th, in 1999.
What Lake George's logging railroad was actually first atWinfield Scott Gerrish's 1877 line was Michigan's first common-carrier logging railroad, not the state's first railroad built to haul logs.
When Kmart ran a retail empire from Big Beaver Road in TroyThe dime-store company S. S. Kresge founded grew into Kmart and ran its headquarters from a complex on Big Beaver Road in Troy from 1972 until 2005, before the building was finally torn down.
When New Baltimore was a resort town with salt bathsFor two decades after the Civil War, New Baltimore was the busiest town in Macomb County — an opera house, a brewery, hotels, and mineral salt baths drawing visitors to Anchor Bay.
When oil came up under Clare and the mob came with itIn the early 1930s Clare sat at the edge of a central-Michigan oil boom, and the mob-backed Mammoth Producing & Refining Company grew into one of the biggest independent oil producers east of the Mississippi.
When snowmobiles took over frozen Lake CadillacCadillac's North American Snow Festival began in 1984 as a snowmobile blowout on frozen Lake Cadillac, then shifted as the snow grew less reliable.
When Zeeland shipped ten million baby chicks a yearFrom the 1920s into the 1950s Zeeland was a baby-chick capital, with dozens of hatcheries mailing millions of day-old chicks across the country — and one founded in 1913 still runs.
White Cloud: how a railroad town on the White River won the courthouseWhite Cloud has been Newaygo County's seat of government for over a century, despite sitting north of the county's biggest towns — a quirk that traces back to the railroad.
White Pine Village: a frontier town rebuilt under the pinesTwo miles south of Ludington, Historic White Pine Village brings together more than 30 buildings and exhibits from Mason County's past.
Whites Bridge: burned by an arsonist, rebuilt board for boardA covered bridge built over the Flat River in 1869 near Smyrna stood for 144 years until arson destroyed it in 2013; a near-exact replica reopened to traffic in 2020.
Why a Grandville creek is named for plasterPlaster Creek in Grandville is named for the gypsum found along its banks; the first mill to grind that gypsum into plaster was built where the creek crossed the Grandville Road in 1841.
Why a Kalamazoo County township is named after the AlamoSettlers organizing this township in 1838 named it for Davy Crockett and the men who died at the Alamo two years earlier — and gave a neighboring township the name Texas for the same reason.
Why a small farm town has 100-plus outlet stores: Birch RunBirch Run, a small town halfway between Flint and Saginaw, has drawn shoppers off I-75 to one of the Midwest's biggest outlet centers since 1986.
Why a town in mid-Michigan is named St. LouisSt. Louis, Michigan, grew from Joseph Clapp's 1853 sawmill on the Pine River and took its name from St. Louis, Missouri — the city where the county's own namesake, General Charles Gratiot, spent his final years.
Why downtown Wayland looks the way it doesWayland's Main and Superior street commercial core, much of it rebuilt after an 1883 fire, joined the National Register of Historic Places in 2021 as a 35-building downtown district.
Why Marquette's harbor light is painted redThe red brick lighthouse on the point in Marquette dates to 1866, still guides ore freighters into the harbor, and is the oldest significant building in the city.
Why the old highway through here is called Red ArrowRed Arrow Highway, the two-lane that strings together Van Buren's fruit-belt towns, is the old route of US-12 — named for the 32nd 'Red Arrow' Division of Michigan and Wisconsin National Guardsmen.
Why Wexford County carries an Irish nameWexford County was first laid out in 1840 as Kautawaubet, for a Potawatomi chief, then renamed in 1843 after County Wexford in Ireland.
Williams Island: the Idlewild park named for a heart surgeonThe island at the heart of Idlewild carries the name of Dr. Daniel Hale Williams — the surgeon who repaired a stab wound to a man's heart in 1893 and later summered on this lake.
Williamston still has a one-screen movie house on its main dragThe Sun Theatre opened on Williamston's downtown street in 1947, sat abandoned for years, and was rescued by a couple who reopened it as a single-screen cinema in 1980.

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