News History & Fun in Michigan
This tag hints at articles and stories about Michigan history and the Michigan Thumb region. Michigan was part of the Northwest territory, and starting in 1815, the fur trade and influx of settlers and land speculators began.
By the time Michigan became a state in 1838, much of the southern third was already cris-crossed with improved Indian trails and initial roads. In a few short years, the lumbering era would begin, followed by the agriculture growth resulting from the cleared land.
Long before Michigan had county seats and surveyed townships, Native communities had villages, fishing stations, sugar camps, farm fields, trade routes and ceremonial places across the Great Lakes. The record is especially rich around Saginaw Bay and the Thumb.
The Barnes-Hecker Mine Disaster struck near Ishpeming on Nov. 3, 1926, when a collapse sent water, mud and rock into the underground workings. Fifty-one men died. Only Wilfred Wills escaped, climbing an 800-foot ladder as the mine filled beneath him.
Follow five towns along northern Saginaw Bay where timber, rivers, railroads, gypsum, cheese and tourism shaped local life. This Michigan history hub gathers videos, photographs, supporting articles and travel stops from Pinconning through Omer, Au Gres and Alabaster to Tawas Bay.
Six small Michigan towns once depended on two intersecting railroad routes. This Southern Thumb history hub brings together Michigan Moments videos, rare photographs and supporting articles about Marlette, Clifford, North Branch, Mayville, Kingston and Silverwood, tracing their shift from lumber settlements to farm communities today.
Silverwood began as Easy, became Rollo, then took its lasting name in 1892. Rail service, local businesses, churches and farm families shaped this small Tuscola County community.
Michigan was once dismissed as a worthless swamp by early federal surveyors, a region supposedly too muddy and mosquito-ridden to support a growing…
In 1866, two men paddled a canoe from Vassar to Caro carrying the official government records that would settle a heated dispute over the location of…
Between 1845 and 1880, the Keweenaw Peninsula produced more copper than any other region in the world, yet today many of the towns that fueled this…
Historic photographs trace Sandusky, Michigan, from its lumber-era roots into a busy county seat shaped by railroads, agriculture and local commerce. The account follows two depots, grain elevators, downtown hotels, the 1915 courthouse fire and the unusual Practical Institute of Pharmacy class photographed in 1929.
In the late 1800s, Caseville’s salt wells produced up to 50,000 barrels annually, a massive output that fueled the rapid growth of this Saginaw Bay…
