Ottawa County,
Municipality by Municipality

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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