Things You Did Not Know
About Where We Live

No, though he grew up there. He was born Leslie Lynch King Jr. in Omaha, Nebraska on July 14, 1913, came to Grand Rapids as a small child, and did not legally change his name to Gerald R. Ford Jr. until 1935. He is buried on the grounds of his museum in Grand Rapids. Source: fordlibrarymuseum.gov

Still debated The title came from an online reader poll run by Examiner.com, not from any brewing authority. Grand Rapids tied with Asheville, North Carolina in 2012, won outright in 2013, and the poll was retired afterward, which is why the label has stuck ever since. Source: fox17online.com

Not quite. Grand Haven is the only community named in the federal statute, but the same law lets the Commandant recognize other communities as Coast Guard Cities after giving Congress 90 days notice, and several towns have since been recognized. Source: govinfo.gov

Still debated That line gets repeated constantly, but the local institutions do not document it. The Holland Museum's own exhibition on the windmill's journey from the Netherlands in the early 1960s makes no such claim, so treat the last one ever detail as folklore until a Dutch export record turns up. Source: hollandmuseum.org

Still debated It is widely repeated as exactly 227 miles, but published figures range from about 212 to 227 depending on who measured and where they started. It is consistently described as Michigan's second longest river, running from Houghton Lake to Muskegon Lake. Source: www2.dnr.state.mi.us

Still debated That is the popular story, usually attached to a legend about a foot race run before a pot could boil, but it does not hold up. A Pokagon Band of Potawatomi language specialist notes the language has no L sound, and one longtime local historian found that a version he had repeated for years had simply been invented. Nobody knows for certain. Source: wmuk.org

Still debated Ludington has a state historical marker at the mouth of the Pere Marquette River saying he did, but Frankfort has a marker of its own at the mouth of the Betsie River, placed a year earlier in 1965. Historians still disagree about which river matches the 1675 account. Source: shorelinemedia.net

No, though Reed City keeps its museum. George Bennard composed the hymn around 1912 and it was first sung in Pokagon in 1913. Bennard retired to a home just north of Reed City and lived there until his death in 1958, which is how the town became its keeper. Source: en.wikipedia.org

Still debated Close, but the wording matters. The DNR says you are never more than 6 miles from a body of water or 85 miles from a Great Lake, and body of water includes rivers, streams and ponds, not just lakes. It is a longstanding rule of thumb rather than a published survey result. Source: michigan.gov

Still debated No. The Mackinac Bridge Authority ranks it seventh in the world by total suspended length, and its own pages have carried a fifth place figure at different times, which shows how much the ranking depends on what you measure. The defensible claim is longest in the western hemisphere. Source: mackinacbridge.org

Still debated Not overall. The National Golf Foundation counts 868 courses in Michigan against 1,290 in Florida and 963 in California. What Michigan does lead is public golf, with 748 daily fee, municipal and resort courses. Source: ngf.org

Still debated Almost certainly yes, but the tidy number deserves a caveat. The commonly repeated count of about 129 comes from tallies built on Coast Guard light lists, and totals shift depending on whether you count destroyed, moved or privately owned lights. No single agency publishes an official state count. Source: en.wikipedia.org

Still debated The official answer since a 1982 USGS resurvey is Mount Arvon in Baraga County at 1,979 feet, which edged out nearby Mount Curwood by about a foot. Newer surveys put Arvon roughly 0.4 feet below Curwood, so the title is genuinely unsettled and the two summits are within inches of each other. Source: en.wikipedia.org

Still debated The favorite version says James Vernor mixed his tonic, went off to war in 1862, and found it transformed in an oak barrel on his return. The Detroit Historical Society notes a competing account, backed by a family member, that he did not create the formula until after the war. What is solid is that Vernors was first served in Detroit in 1866. Source: detroithistorical.org

She was born in Memphis, Tennessee on March 25, 1942 and came to Detroit as a small child. Detroit is where she was raised, where she first sang, and where she died in 2018, so the city has a real claim on her. The birth certificate still says Tennessee. Source: detroithistorical.org

Neither one. The automobile is generally credited to Karl Benz in Germany, and assembly line car production was already running under Ransom Olds in Lansing by 1901. What Ford did in 1913 was put the line in motion, which was a different innovation and an enormous one. Source: askus.thehenryford.org

Still debated No. A Michigan news investigation that consulted attorneys and law enforcement could not locate any such statute or ordinance, and it would not be enforceable if it existed. Most viral Michigan weird law lists include an entry like this one that traces back to nothing at all. Source: uppermichiganssource.com

The Michigan DNR counts 10,899 inland lakes of five acres or more. Its fishing pages use the broader figure of more than 11,000, which is where the familiar round number comes from. Source: michigan.gov

Michigan, with about 3,300 miles of Great Lakes shoreline. The DNR also notes Michigan has more total shoreline than any state except Alaska. Source: michigan.gov

Along Michigan's Great Lakes shoreline. The state environmental agency describes them as the largest collection of freshwater dunes in the world, and roughly 74,000 acres along 265 miles of coast are regulated as critical dune areas. Source: michigan.gov

The EPA puts the Great Lakes at about 21 percent of the world's surface fresh water and 84 percent of North America's. It is one of the largest concentrations of accessible fresh water anywhere. Source: epa.gov

Lake Huron, at 3,827 miles including islands, well ahead of Lake Superior's 2,726. Huron is smaller by volume, but its ragged bays and thousands of islands stretch the coast out. Source: epa.gov

The Mighty Mac runs 26,372 feet, right around five miles, with a 3,800 foot main span between the towers. It opened to traffic on November 1, 1957 and remains the longest suspension bridge in the western hemisphere. Source: mackinacbridge.org

The Kirtland's warbler nests on the ground only in dense jack pine between four and fifteen years old, a window so narrow that fire suppression nearly ended the species. It was federally protected from 1967 to 2019, and the 2021 survey counted 2,245 pairs, more than double the recovery goal. Source: fws.gov

The dwarf lake iris, which the US Fish and Wildlife Service calls endemic to the modern and ancient shorelines of northern Lakes Huron and Michigan. Of roughly 170 known populations, 89 are in Michigan, and it has been federally threatened since 1988. Source: fws.gov

The wolf and moose research on Isle Royale in Lake Superior. The project describes itself as the longest continuous study of any predator and prey system anywhere, now past six decades of unbroken observation. Source: isleroyalewolf.org

State records estimate about 6,000 vessels were lost on the Great Lakes, roughly 1,500 of them in Michigan waters. The cold fresh water keeps many remarkably intact, with plates, bells and rigging still in place. Source: michigan.gov

Michigan's thirteen underwater preserves cover roughly 7,200 square miles of Great Lakes bottomland, larger than Connecticut and Rhode Island combined. Removing or disturbing artifacts there is a felony. Source: michigan.gov

Michigan, with nearly 300,000 registered snowmobiles, more than any other state. The DNR maintains more than 6,200 miles of groomed trail to go with them. Source: michigan.gov

The two peninsulas hold about 8 million acres of public hunting land, including 4.5 million acres the DNR manages directly. Statewide, Michigan carries close to 20 million acres of forest, roughly 4 million of it state forest. Source: michigan.gov

Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore won a Good Morning America viewer poll in August 2011, beating nine other finalists. The National Park Service noted at the time that six of the ten nominees were national park sites. Source: nps.gov

Wayne County paved a one mile stretch of Woodward Avenue between Six Mile and Seven Mile in 1909, and the Federal Highway Administration credits it as the first rural American public road surfaced in Portland cement concrete. It opened to traffic on July 4 of that year. Source: fhwa.dot.gov

A Detroit police officer named William Potts built the first three color, four direction signal in 1920, and it went up at Woodward Avenue and Fort Street. Signals before that used only red and green. His arrangement became the national standard by the mid 1930s. Source: thehenryford.org

On May 18, 1846 Michigan voted to abolish the death penalty for murder, the first English speaking government in the world to do so. The penalty for first degree murder became life imprisonment instead. Source: michiganpublic.org

Michigan and Ohio both claimed a 468 square mile strip around Toledo, and the 1835 standoff became known as the Toledo War. Congress made statehood conditional on Michigan surrendering the strip in exchange for the western Upper Peninsula. Michigan agreed in December 1836 and entered the Union in January 1837, trading a port city for timber, iron and copper country. Source: michiganology.org

Ford put the first moving assembly line into operation at Highland Park in 1913. Chassis assembly dropped from roughly twelve and a half hours to about 93 minutes within a year. Source: guides.loc.gov

Michigan's 1835 constitution required the capital to move by 1847, and after months of deadlock the legislature landed on Lansing Township, which had almost no settlement in it at all. Observers called the site a howling wilderness and treated the choice as a joke that stuck. The new city was briefly known as Michigan, Michigan. Source: capitol.michigan.gov

The Soo Locks at Sault Ste. Marie move roughly 80 million tons of freight and more than 7,000 vessel passages a year, which by cargo tonnage makes them the busiest anywhere. They carry ships across the 21 foot drop between Lake Superior and the lower lakes. Source: uptravel.com

Since 1898. Carriage operators petitioned the village council arguing that automobiles endangered everyone using the streets, and the council passed the ban the same day. The state park commission added its own ban in 1901, and it is still enforced. Source: mackinacparks.com

Buddy's Rendezvous began serving the thick, square pizza in 1946 after owner Gus Guerra worked out a recipe with his mother in law. The blue steel pans were industrial trays from auto plants, used to hold small parts and catch drips, and that heavy steel is what makes the caramelized cheese edge. Source: pmq.com

Cornish miners brought it to the copper and iron ranges in the mid 1800s, and it worked underground because a miner could carry it down and warm it over a candle. The traditional filling is beef, potatoes and onions, with rutabaga still a matter of local argument. Source: lib.nmu.edu

Michigan grows roughly three quarters of all the tart cherries produced in the United States, according to the state agriculture department, and has led the country for decades. Source: michigan.gov

In 1894 the Kellogg brothers left boiled wheat dough sitting while they were called away, then ran the stale dough through rollers anyway. The moisture had spread evenly through each berry, so instead of a sheet they got individual flakes. Corn flakes followed a few years later. Source: historytoday.com

The town's own account credits founder George Reeves, who ran a grist mill and paid local farmers in homemade whiskey. When wives asked after their husbands during harvest, the answer was that he had gone to Hell again. The settlement took the name in 1841, though competing origin stories still circulate. Source: gotohellmi.com

A 1953 act, MCL 435.251, still makes it unlawful to buy, sell, trade or negotiate motor vehicles on Sunday. The ban applies only in counties above 130,000 people, so Sunday car sales remain legal in smaller counties, including every county in the Upper Peninsula. Source: legislature.mi.gov

The American mastodon, adopted in 2002. Remains have been recovered from more than 250 locations around the state, including one of the most complete skeletons ever found, unearthed near Owosso. Source: kalamazoomuseum.org

Colon, in St. Joseph County. Magician Harry Blackstone made it his summer base and went into business with Australian magician Percy Abbott, whose magic manufacturing company stayed in town after the partnership ended. The annual Magic Get Together still draws magicians from around the world. Source: michiganpublic.org

Berry Gordy Jr. founded Tamla Records on January 12, 1959 with an $800 loan from his family, adding the Motown label later that year. Between 1961 and 1971 the company released 110 top ten hits out of the house on West Grand Boulevard known as Hitsville U.S.A., a museum today. Source: detroithistorical.org

It began in 1934 as a promotion. Owner George A. Richards, a former radio executive, wanted to pull attention away from baseball, so he scheduled a Thanksgiving game against the undefeated Chicago Bears and arranged a national radio hookup. The stadium sold out, and it has been annual ever since apart from a wartime break. Source: profootballhof.com

Grand Rapids, starting January 25, 1945, as part of a ten year study run with the U.S. Public Health Service, the Michigan Department of Health, and the University of Michigan. By 1955 tooth decay among local children had dropped about 65 percent, and fluoridation spread from there. Source: nidcr.nih.gov

On the Grand River in Grand Rapids. On July 24, 1880 the Grand Rapids Electric Light and Power Company connected a dynamo to a water wheel at the Wolverine Chair Factory and lit 16 brush arc lamps, along with a hotel, a jewelry store and an opera house across the river. Source: grpm.org

The first successful whooping cough vaccine. Pearl Kendrick and Grace Eldering worked out of the Michigan Department of Health laboratory in Grand Rapids, collecting samples from sick families at night by kerosene lamp, and ran the first large scale controlled trial of a pertussis vaccine. Michigan was distributing it by 1940. Source: wwwnc.cdc.gov

In Grand Rapids. Kellogg's brought the concept to the Hekman Biscuit plant, later Keebler, where plant manager Bill Post assembled a team that turned it into a shelf stable product in about four months. They reached stores in 1964 in strawberry, blueberry, brown sugar cinnamon and apple currant. Source: washingtonpost.com

Studio 28 on 28th Street in Wyoming opened Christmas Day 1965 with a single 1,000 seat auditorium and grew to 20 screens by 1988, making it the first megaplex and, for several years, the largest movie theater in the country. Source: en.wikipedia.org

Still debated Frank Edward McGurrin was born in Grand Rapids in 1861 and famously beat an eight finger typist in an 1888 Cincinnati contest without looking at the keys, which put touch typing on front pages nationwide. Whether he actually invented the method or was simply the first to be noticed doing it is still argued. Source: en.wikipedia.org

Anna Bissell took over the Bissell carpet sweeper company in Grand Rapids after her husband Melville died in 1889, and she is widely described as the first woman CEO of a major American company. Melville had patented the sweeper in 1876 to deal with sawdust ground into their shop floor carpet. Source: thehenryford.org

At 28th Street and Kalamazoo Avenue in Grand Rapids. In June 1962 Meijer added 80,000 square feet and 25 departments to an existing supermarket and called it Thrifty Acres, a store the company credits with pioneering the format. Source: prnewswire.com

La Grande Vitesse was the first civic sculpture paid for with a mix of federal and private money. The National Endowment for the Arts awarded Grand Rapids a $45,000 grant in 1967 under its brand new public art program, and local donors covered the rest. Source: arts.gov

Wolverine World Wide launched Hush Puppies in 1958 using pigskin suede developed during wartime work for the Navy. A sales story about tossing hush puppies to quiet barking dogs gave the shoes their name and their basset hound logo, since they were pitched as relief for barking feet. Source: fundinguniverse.com

Five dollars. Signs on the Fallasburg Bridge still warn of a five dollar fine for riding or driving faster than a walk. The 100 foot Brown truss span was built in 1871 for about $1,500 and still carries cars under a three ton limit. Source: en.wikipedia.org

Steelcase purchased the Meyer May House in Grand Rapids in 1985 and reopened it in 1987 after a full restoration. Wright designed the Prairie style home in 1908 for a local clothier, and it is often called the most complete Wright restoration anywhere. Source: meyermayhouse.steelcase.com

Not for well over a century. Nineteenth century dams and limestone quarrying flattened the namesake rapids on the Grand River. In July 2025 the city began removing four low head dams downtown to bring the whitewater back, after roughly 18 years of planning. Source: grandrapidsmi.gov

About 92 miles. The Fred Meijer White Pine Trail State Park runs from Comstock Park to Cadillac on the old Grand Rapids and Indiana Railroad grade, passing through roughly 15 towns, and it is now fully paved. Source: michigan.gov

Roger B. Chaffee, born February 15, 1935 and a graduate of Grand Rapids Central High School. He was selected as an astronaut in 1963 and died in the Apollo 1 fire in January 1967 before ever flying in space. Source: nasa.gov

Floyd Mayweather Jr., born there on February 24, 1977 into a boxing family. He retired with a professional record of 50 wins and no losses. Source: britannica.com

In the winter of 1936 a New York Sun writer complained that nobody in the country still sold old fashioned red flannels. The editors of the Cedar Springs Clipper wrote back that their town certainly did, the Associated Press carried it nationwide, and orders poured in. The first Red Flannel Day followed in 1939. Source: redflannelfestival.org

The Grand Rapids Public Museum, founded in 1854 as the Grand Rapids Lyceum of Natural History. Its earliest holdings were cabinets of curiosities gathered by local figures including John Ball, and in 1971 it became the first museum accredited by the American Association of Museums. Source: grpm.org

In two house basements in Ada. Rich DeVos and Jay Van Andel founded the company in 1959, and their first product was a biodegradable cleaner called Liquid Organic Cleaner. Source: amway.com

Grand Haven. Public Law 105-383, signed in November 1998, added a provision to Title 14 of the U.S. Code stating that the Commandant of the Coast Guard may recognize Grand Haven, Michigan as Coast Guard City, USA. Source: govinfo.gov

Thirty six years. The Grand Haven Musical Fountain was designed by local engineer William Morris Booth II, built in 1962 for roughly $50,000, and played its first show on May 30, 1963. It held the title until 1998. Source: ghfountain.org

About 190 miles of tubing run under roughly 690,000 square feet of streets and sidewalks, circulating water at about 95 degrees using waste heat from the city power plant. The system has run since 1988 and the city calls it the largest publicly owned snowmelt system in North America. Source: cityofholland.com

Lida Rogers proposed mass tulip plantings to honor the city's founders, and 100,000 bulbs went in ahead of the first celebration in 1929. More than five million tulips now bloom across Holland each spring. Source: holland.org

Yes. De Zwaan on Windmill Island Gardens in Holland is described by the city's tourism office as the only authentic Dutch windmill operating in the United States, still turning and grinding wheat into flour. Source: holland.org

Herman Miller introduced Robert Propst's Action Office system in 1968 and describes it as the world's first open plan office system. It became the ancestor of the office cubicle, an outcome Propst himself later criticized. Source: hermanmiller.com

Howard Miller Company was founded in Zeeland in 1926 by Howard C. Miller, whose father Herman Miller is the namesake of the furniture company. By the 1960s Howard Miller had become the world's largest grandfather clock brand. Source: howardmiller.com

Haworth. Industrial arts teacher G.W. Haworth launched Modern Products in Holland in 1948 after making wood display pieces on the side. The company is still family owned and opened its global headquarters in Holland in 2000. Source: haworth.com

Holland. The city records a catastrophic fire on October 8 and 9, 1871, at the same time as the Great Chicago Fire and the Peshtigo Fire in Wisconsin. Only one Holland resident died, a widow named Sara Ooms Tolk. Source: cityofholland.com

The Holland Harbor South Pierhead Light, built in its present form in 1907, was given a gabled roof reflecting the area's Dutch influence. It was automated in 1932, and when the Coast Guard recommended abandoning it in 1970, residents circulated petitions and formed a commission to save it. Source: hmdb.org

The Hudsonville Creamery was formed by local dairy farmers in 1895, and in 1926 it began churning ice cream in summer with six flavors: vanilla, chocolate, strawberry, butter pecan, orange pineapple and tootie fruitie. Year round production followed by 1940. Source: hudsonvilleicecream.com

Coopersville. Del Shannon was born Charles Weedon Westover on December 30, 1934, and although he is often called a Coopersville native, his official biography says he was born in Grand Rapids and the family then moved to Coopersville, where he was raised. Source: delshannon.com

On August 19, 1959 it closed a stretch of Burdick Street to cars and opened the nation's first permanent outdoor pedestrian shopping mall. Architect Victor Gruen designed it for about $60,000, and roughly 200 other cities copied the idea. Source: wwmt.com

At its 1960s peak the Gibson plant at 225 Parsons Street turned out more than 1,000 guitars a day and employed close to 1,000 people. Gibson moved to Nashville and the Kalamazoo plant closed on September 14, 1984. Source: scholarworks.wmich.edu

A group of laid off employees stayed behind and incorporated Heritage Guitar on April 1, 1985, building instruments in the same Parsons Street building. Guitars are still made there today. Source: scholarworks.wmich.edu

William E. Upjohn, born in Richland, patented the first easily dissolvable pill in 1884, soft enough to crush under a thumb so it would actually break down in the stomach. He and his brothers founded their company in Kalamazoo in 1886, and a thumb crushing a pill became the trademark. Source: invent.org

Dutch immigrant farmers began working the area's black muck soil in the 1870s and found it nearly perfect for celery. Kalamazoo shipped trainloads of it for decades, with growers blanching the stalks under boards to keep them pale and mild, until California's climate took the market. Source: wmuk.org

Kalamazoo. Checker's factory produced its first taxicab on June 18, 1923, and the Checker Marathon rolled on with almost no styling changes from the mid 1950s until the last one came off the line on July 12, 1982. Source: kpl.gov

Kalamazoo. The Glenn Miller Orchestra introduced I've Got a Gal in Kalamazoo in the 1942 film Orchestra Wives, written by Harry Warren and Mack Gordon. It was nominated for Best Song and became one of the biggest selling records of the year. Source: oscars.org

He did, though he was born in Pequannock, New Jersey on June 26, 1974. Jeter was raised in Kalamazoo and starred there before the Yankees drafted him, and he was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2020. Source: baseballhall.org

It was the control city. Researchers needed a comparison town of similar size drawing similar water, so Muskegon kept its water unchanged while Grand Rapids added fluoride, and the two cities were measured against each other for a decade. Source: harris23.msu.domains

Sawmills lined Muskegon Lake through the second half of the 1800s, with roughly 32 operating by 1870 and dozens more at the peak. In 1887 the city's mills cut about 665 million board feet in a single season. Source: mibluemag.com

Charles H. Hackley made his money in Muskegon lumber and gave much of it back before his death in 1905. His gifts were valued at roughly $12 million at the time and paid for the public library, a hospital, an art museum and a downtown park. Source: visitmuskegon.org

The USS Silversides completed 14 war patrols in the Pacific and is credited with sinking 23 vessels totaling about 90,080 tons, among the highest counts of any American submarine in the war. She earned twelve battle stars and came to Muskegon in 1987. Source: history.navy.mil

Yes. On December 22, 1942, with no doctor aboard, Pharmacist's Mate Thomas Moore removed a crewman's appendix on the Silversides wardroom table while the boat was submerged near Rabaul. The patient was back on watch within a week. Source: usni.org

The USS LST 393 is one of only two Landing Ship Tanks still afloat out of 1,051 built during the war. She carried troops and armor to Sicily, Salerno and the Normandy beaches, and now serves as a veterans museum. Source: lst393.org

The Muskegon Luge Adventure Sports Park in Muskegon State Park runs a refrigerated track that is one of only a handful in the country and one of the very few open to the general public. Riders take a short lesson, then go down feet first. Source: michigan.gov

Buster Keaton. His father Joe was the first president of the Bluffton Actors' Colony, founded June 14, 1908, where vaudeville performers built summer cottages on the lakeshore. A Michigan historical marker went up at the site in 1997. Source: hmdb.org

James Newell Osterberg Jr., known worldwide as Iggy Pop, was born in Muskegon on April 21, 1947. He was raised near Ypsilanti, so the Muskegon tie is his birthplace rather than his upbringing. Source: detroithistorical.org

It was removed from the binational list of Great Lakes Areas of Concern on September 26, 2025, after being listed in 1987. All nine environmental problems that put it on the list had been addressed, making it the eighth U.S. site ever delisted. Source: michigan.gov

Michigan's Adventure sits in Muskegon County near Whitehall, with more than 60 rides, slides and attractions and seven roller coasters, more than any other park in the state. An outdoor water park shares the grounds. Source: visitmuskegon.org

Yes. The Saugatuck Chain Ferry, established in 1857, is hand cranked along a chain anchored to both banks of the Kalamazoo River. The City of Saugatuck calls it the only remaining hand cranked chain ferry of its kind in the United States, and it carries 26 passengers. Source: saugatuckcity.com

Founded in 1837 near the mouth of the Kalamazoo River, Singapore grew to roughly 200 residents with four lumber mills and a busy harbor. Its own mills cut the forest that sheltered it from Lake Michigan winds, and blowing dune sand buried the town to the rooftops. Source: saugatuck.com

The Second Street Bridge, built in 1886, is a 225 foot Whipple double intersection through truss designed by Zenas King. The American Society of Civil Engineers recognizes it as a landmark marking the transition from cast iron to wrought iron in bridge building. Source: asce.org

Oval Beach in Saugatuck came in at number 24 on Tripadvisor's 2025 Travelers' Choice best U.S. beaches list, and it was the only Great Lakes beach to make the list. Source: wgvunews.org

The SS Keewatin was rescued from a scrapyard and brought to Douglas in 1967, where it sat across from Saugatuck as a museum ship for about 45 years. It was sold in 2012 and sailed back to Ontario. Source: museumships.us

Henry Blakeslee Crane bought the farm in 1916 and five generations of the family have run it since. The pie pantry and bakery have operated out of the family's 150 year old barn since 1972, on a 180 acre property bordering Hutchins Lake. Source: craneorchards.com

They are real. The National Weather Service in Grand Rapids photographed two of them erupting at Oval Beach in Saugatuck in February 2020. They are cones of ice at the edge of a shelf, and wave action forces lake water up through the openings. Source: wzzm13.com

It is a kettle, a bowl shaped hollow left when a buried block of glacial ice melted out thousands of years ago. It drops roughly 100 feet below the surrounding forest floor and, unlike most kettles nearby, it never filled with water. Source: michigan.gov

Irving Delos Charlton donated 210 acres to the county in 1936 along with thousands of artifacts he had collected. The historic village on Thornapple Lake near Hastings was assembled starting in 1969 to portray a typical turn of the century rural Michigan town. Source: barrycountyparks.org

Barry-Roubaix, a gravel road race started in 2009 by Rick and Cathy Plite after they discovered the county's back roads on a group ride. Based in Hastings since 2013, it now draws thousands of riders from dozens of states and several countries. Source: woodtv.com

Still debated Apparently not. The usual account credits Garaudus Nash, a chief engineer for the Grand River Valley Railroad who was surveying the line from Jackson to Grand Rapids in 1866 and suggested the community be named for him. It was incorporated as a village in 1869. Source: en.wikipedia.org

Ionia mayor Fred Green helped launch it in 1915 on the principle that admission should cost nothing. The first one opened August 16, 1915 with a parade of decorated automobiles through town. Source: thedailynews.cc

Belding. The Belding Brothers company built its largest silk thread operation there starting around 1890 and ran four mills. The Belrockton, built in 1906, is the last of the three company boarding houses and is a museum today. Source: belding.mi.us

The Ionia County Courthouse. Designed by David W. Gibbs of Toledo and finished for about $42,380, it took its first county offices in January 1886 and is still in use, with upper walls of sandstone quarried nearby. Source: sah-archipedia.org

Into the Baldwin River, a tributary of the Pere Marquette, on April 11, 1884. A shipment of about 4,900 fry from the federal hatchery at Northville was warming dangerously in transit, so the crew released them off a bridge near Baldwin. A state historical marker stands nearby. Source: hmdb.org

It is a lodge full of furniture that Raymond W. Overholzer carved from white pine stumps and roots between the early 1920s and his death in 1952, built as a memorial to the forests logging had erased. The collection includes a dining table made from a single stump. Source: sah-archipedia.org

He began his acting career at Manistee's Ramsdell Theatre and returned twice in the 1990s to help raise money for its restoration. The theatre opened September 4, 1903, paid for by local attorney Thomas Jefferson Ramsdell. Source: ramsdelltheatre.org

Yes. Frustrated by a mill dam that flooded their fields, homesteaders spent weeks hand digging a trench between Portage Lake and Lake Michigan. Just after midnight on May 14, 1871 the water broke through, and because Portage Lake sat about twelve feet higher, the escaping flood tore out the channel Onekama still uses. Source: onekama.info

Lumbermen drilling near their sawmills in 1880 struck a deep brine deposit, and by the 1890s the Manistee and Ludington area was the largest salt producing region in Michigan. Morton Salt bought a Manistee plant in 1930 and still operates on the same site. Source: visitmanisteecounty.com

Yes. The SS Badger, in service since 1953, is the last coal fired passenger vessel operating on the Great Lakes and the last powered by Skinner Unaflow engines. It was designated a National Historic Landmark on January 20, 2016. Source: en.wikipedia.org

In 2015 the SS Badger ferry route was officially designated part of US 10, so the highway continues across 62 miles of open water between Ludington and Manitowoc, Wisconsin. Source: en.wikipedia.org

Big Sable Point Lighthouse sits inside Ludington State Park with no road to its door, so visitors hike about 1.8 miles to get there. The 1867 tower stands 112 feet tall with 130 steps to the lantern room. Source: en.wikipedia.org

Woodbridge N. Ferris and his wife Helen opened the Big Rapids Industrial School in 1884 with fifteen students in rented rooms downtown. He went on to serve as Michigan governor from 1913 to 1916 and as a United States senator from 1922 until his death in 1928, staying president of the school the whole time. Source: ferris.edu

He cut hair. Hendrik Meijer was a barber in Greenville when he and his teenage son Fred opened North Side Grocery in 1934, buying the first shelves of merchandise on credit. Source: harris23.msu.domains

Danish immigrants began arriving in Greenville in 1856, and their letters home brought waves of friends and relatives after them. The settlement grew large enough that the city still marks the connection with an annual festival. Source: flatrivermuseum.org

In Fremont, where Dorothy Gerber was hand straining peas for her infant daughter in 1927 and suggested the family's Fremont Canning Company do the work instead. The first Gerber strained foods reached grocery shelves in 1928. Source: cbsnews.com

Yes. The company ran a 1928 contest for a face to put on its labels and chose a charcoal sketch by artist Dorothy Hope Smith. The infant who modeled for it, Ann Turner Cook, grew up to be an English teacher and mystery novelist. Source: encyclopedia.com

The Croton hydroelectric plant went into full service in September 1907 with a transmission line carrying power roughly fifty miles to Grand Rapids at the highest voltage then in use anywhere. Visiting engineers came from around the world to see it, and the plant still generates today. Source: renewableenergyworld.com

Yes, and it is in Newaygo County. Loda Lake National Wildflower Sanctuary was established in 1949 with the Michigan Garden Clubs and protects more than 230 wildflower species across a spring fed lake, a bog, oak woods and an old farm. Source: fs.usda.gov

Only California and Washington grow more asparagus than Michigan, and Oceana County grows the bulk of the Michigan crop in the sandy ground around Hart and Shelby. The National Asparagus Festival started there in 1974 and still runs each spring. Source: canr.msu.edu

The Silver Lake ORV Area covers about 450 acres of open dune and is the only place east of the Mississippi where you can drive your own four wheel drive, ATV or dirt bike on the dunes. The season runs April 1 through October 31 with permits and a safety flag required. Source: michigan.gov

Little Sable Point Lighthouse was lit in 1874 and stands about 107 feet tall. Its painted coating was stripped in 1977, leaving the original brick exposed, which is why it looks so different from its white sister tower up the coast. Source: en.wikipedia.org

The Original Dulcimer Players Club was founded near Evart in 1963, and its festival at the Osceola County Fairgrounds became the granddaddy of dulcimer gatherings. It is an all volunteer acoustic event built around open jamming and free workshops. Source: evartdulcimerfest.org

Two long state rail trails meet there. The 55 mile Pere Marquette State Trail runs from Baldwin east to Clare and crosses the 92 mile White Pine Trail at Reed City, so riders can set out for Grand Rapids, Cadillac, Baldwin or Midland from the same spot. Source: en.wikipedia.org